reviews for Open Source software?

November 18, 2005 4:05 PM

Tell me about a good site to read user reviews of open source software.

I guess I'm looking for the equivalent of cnet's downloads.com page or a site where people leave more detailed comments on what works and what doesn't work. On sourceforge you don't seem to get the detailed commentary from users or stats about the products (which is most popular etc.) I'm looking for an open source CMS (and also conference registration software, but that's less important); I'm leaning towards Plone and Drupal, and ease of use is important factor #1. It's for a small gallery web site. Thanks for any advice, tips and support you can give me - seems like I'll need it for dealing with a CMS...

posted by rmm to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Freshmeat is pretty much the type of site you're looking for. The reviews are kind of "meh," though.
posted by zsazsa at 4:30 PM on November 18, 2005

http://www.opensourcecms.com/

they also let you try 'em out
posted by alball at 5:21 PM on November 18, 2005

hotscripts might be kinda what you're looking for.
posted by ph00dz at 5:54 PM on November 18, 2005

I don't really have a site to reccomend, but I've poked at both plone and Drupal to varying degrees.

Plone seems quite powerful, but as I recall, it needs to be able to run a persistant process, with limits your hosting options somewhat.

Drupal is a PHP app and you should be able to run it on pretty much any webhost. Installation of the base system and additional modules could be simpler, though that may be addressed soon. Civicspace has a custom version of drupal with a number of thrid party modules bundled an web-based install script. The standard drupal isn't bad to install, but you have to edit some files by hand and then run some scripts. I'd suggest giving it a try and seeing if it meets your needs.
posted by Good Brain at 10:17 PM on November 18, 2005