NOVEMBER SOFTWARE GIVEAWAY DRAWING IS NOW CLOSED

[mouser]

The drawing is closed..

A custom optimization program was written to try to do the best job of distributing prizes in the fairest way that best matches the preferences people expressed.  It is currently running and searching for best distribution of prizes.

I will post results later today or early tomorrow.

Good luck to all who entered!

And remember, even if you didn't win this time, we will have lots more opportunities to win free software in the upcoming months (hopefully a few things to give away each month).

[Catalin]

Maybe some statistics might be interesting for all of us - not the specific (and generally private) information on how each member "wanted" the possible items, but instead some "aggregate" data - to give us some idea what was more desirable

[mouser]

some general preliminary observations:

• there wasn't a single program in the drawing that was "left over" (in the sense that there weren't enough people that wanted it).
• not surprisingly, the most expensive app (vmware) was very highly desired - makes sense since this is the one of the few programs in the giveaway that most people couldn't afford to buy.
• there didn't seem to be too many other real standouts in terms of people wanting it more than other programs.  the rest of the apps seemed to be fairly evenly spread out in terms of requests.  that could be because the members here already own many of these programs.