The excellent Open Source project metrics repository, ohloh.net is a great place to dig around for evidence of the software growth process I've blogged about a few times in the last 6 months.

OK, so many projects don't have complete histories (i.e., they seem to have been born fully-formed and near the plateau of their growth). And there's quite a bit of wierdness going on in some of them (sudden explosions or spikes of code, for example), but a decent proportion - maybe 1/3 to 1/2 - display the classic code growth curve like the example below.



I could explore this site for hours. It's better than Second Life, as far as I'm concerned!

I must say, though; I do feel rather vindicated.

Now, if only they had test coverage and design quality metrics...