Then you did not understand my suggestion. It was to compare a random mention of Kicad against having a *.kicad_pro file inside of it, meaning the repo contains probably a Kicad/Board project.
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@devbisme
You may want to update your analysis below:
Itâs not âkinda linear growthâ nor âflat since thenâ, because you did not post the totals, but the new projects per year (Add the ânewâ to the title of the graph). Total KiCad projects on github more then doubled in the last 3 years, and in the 3 years before that, and in the 3 years before that. And that is not linear, but (close to) exponential. This probably becomes more clearer if you plot the accumulative projects, which is also a more common graph. Eelik was also mislead by that.
Growth of what though ? growth of the user base or the projects they are creating ? as each new user becomes more familiar with KiCad itâs reasonable to assume they may create more projects, but I think the number of new projects each year is a better indication of the growth of the Userbase, and I think that is what is important.
Perhaps another search could be done to get the number of unique Github accounts associated with those KiCad projects and plot that for each year.
Yes, Iâm assuming that each active KiCad user produces an average p projects per year. If you look at the number of new projects produced each year, P, then the number of active KiCad users, N, required to produce those would be N = P/p. So observing the number of new projects generated each year serves as a proxy for the number of active users each year.
One can argue that this model is too simple. If someone can produce a more realistic model without a bunch of hand-waving, then go for it.
The data Iâve collected also includes the ownerâs login id for each project, so that could be done.
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I donât think one can read to much into these numbers except maybe that there is growth but there are probably better indicators for this as well. Most professional users wonât put their projects to github for obvious reasons, students and hobbyists often only use their âlocalâ storage as well so you end up with a very limited part of the user base represented in there. I would assume that the relation of published projects on github to actually worldwide created projects constantly decreases with more and more regular users and not only enthusiasts picking up KiCad.
Certainly, the people from KiCad Services Corporation probably have a quite good idea about these things, because they do commercial support for KiCad, and Iâm hoping to hear some things about their views after KiCon 2023.
I have not seen statistics about the use of this forum, I think there is a bit of growth in the number of questions, but a lot of people probably donât post here anymore after they have learned KiCad.
Donations via the Linux Foundation seem to be sort of steady. The last time I checked I see mostly recurring small donations and a few big ones. The donations from Aisler, seem to have declined a bit. I think it averages now around EUR750 each month, while there were times it was over EUR1000/month. Aisler has coupled their ordering system with KiCad donations. Itâs a bit unfortunate that Iâve heard some less shiny things about Aisler, and it is a reason for some to not order PCBâs from them anymore. But I know nothing about other donation channels, except a sizable one-time grant from NLnet.
Which is pretty good considering the financial stress a lot of people are in this year.
Anyway, letâs try to keep on topic
OK, the easiest way to do that is just to go to Github, do a search for âkicadâ, select some of the projects that show up, and then go look in their repos to see what file types they have. You donât need me in order to do that. The Github API doesnât allow a global search for all repos containing a certain type of file.
I donât need you, dude. LoL 
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