How many developers does Ubuntu have, and how does that compare?

[CAsurfer]

I'm interested in measuring Ubuntu's success, and by comparison, the success of other Linux distributions.

1) Distrowatch can tell you which distributions are hot in terms of hits per day, but do you know of any sites that post estimates of the size of each distro's userbase?

2) It seems to me that a good proxy for the future success of a distribution is its present number of developers. Do you know how many developers Ubuntu has, and how that compares to other distributions? Perhaps it would be best to separate developers by full-time versus part-time.

Thanks.

[phrostbyte]

Ubuntu on it's own has over 100 active developers. That doesn't say how much they work on Ubuntu per week, just that they work (actively) on it. But Ubuntu itself is mostly a collection of already developed software.

[SunnyRabbiera]

ubuntu has one of the best teams of developers, along side of Debain, mandriva and redhat.
Debian by far has the most for it though

[23meg]

The core development team (developers who work on the "Main" component) has 49 members, and the MOTU team (developers who work on "Universe") has 83. Even though these are the number of "active" people listed here (https://launchpad.net/~motu) and here (https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev), not all of them, most of whom are volunteers, are actually active all the time.