As suggested, I have run the code such that a dist's mere appearance on the CPAN is not counted. In other words: code exists if it is used. If not, it is ignored entirely. It ends up not having much effect.
author | volume | req (old) | req (new) ZOFFIX | 1 | 145 | (n/a) ADAMK | 2 | 32 | 34 RJBS | 3 | 43 | 43 MIYAGAWA | 4 | 82 | 84 NUFFIN | 5 | 85 | 91 GBARR | 114 | 1 | 1 PMQS | 221 | 2 | 2 PETDANCE | 31 | 3 | 3 MSCHWERN | 40 | 4 | 4 SAPER | 32 | 5 | 5
JROCKWAY suggested running this in reverse: see who uses the most. I think that doing both would be interesting: who gets used a lot, "despite" also using a lot of prereqs.
