Top open source projects?
March 18, 2005 6:13 PM Subscribe
I am putting together some research, and wanted to poll fellow MeFiers about what they think are the five (or two or ten) most influential or important open source projects, currently being worked on and why. Linux and Firefox are obvious, so what others would qualify -- Gaim? OpenCRX? I want to know your list, and why these would make it.
I am interested also in the reasons you would pick these particular projects -- popularity? Number of participants? Potential to shake up the industry? Coolness?
I am interested also in the reasons you would pick these particular projects -- popularity? Number of participants? Potential to shake up the industry? Coolness?
GIMP. It's incredibly powerful and it's free... I use it all the time and am so grateful I wish evil gods would imbue me with the ability to code so I could help them out.
posted by selfnoise at 6:27 PM on March 18, 2005
posted by selfnoise at 6:27 PM on March 18, 2005
I know nothing at all about programing and I'm not computer geek. I say: Linux, Firefox, and OpenOffice.
Why? Because they're the only ones I've heard of. This suggests to me that they're the ones that have penetrated popular consciousness. And that's something -- not the most important thing by far, for sure -- but a criteria worth considering.
posted by duck at 6:33 PM on March 18, 2005
Why? Because they're the only ones I've heard of. This suggests to me that they're the ones that have penetrated popular consciousness. And that's something -- not the most important thing by far, for sure -- but a criteria worth considering.
posted by duck at 6:33 PM on March 18, 2005
Apache, definitely. For its sheer ubiquity, and for being one of the few products keeps on successfully beating back Microsoft's attempts to take over a category.
GNU (which as Stallman never tires of pointing out...) is as critical to Linux's success as the kernel itself. Its influence is also much wider spread than just Linux. OS X, along with countless applications developed for it, owes a huge debt to GNU. So does practically every other *nix variant.
Does Wikipedia count?
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 6:33 PM on March 18, 2005
GNU (which as Stallman never tires of pointing out...) is as critical to Linux's success as the kernel itself. Its influence is also much wider spread than just Linux. OS X, along with countless applications developed for it, owes a huge debt to GNU. So does practically every other *nix variant.
Does Wikipedia count?
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 6:33 PM on March 18, 2005
Apache: #1 webserver in the world. 'Nuff said.
Perl: Personally, I use python, but perl still gets the nod as the trailblazer. It's really the go-to scripting language in the Unix world (and a lot of the Windows world too). Some people even try to do real work with it I hear. ;)
OpenSSL: having an open source collection of crypto routines has made encryption, secure hashing and secure key exchange virtually ubiquitous among developers. You'd be hard-pressed to find a sizable open-source project the doesn't use it for something nowadays.
And, uh, Linux and Firefox I guess. For all the obvious reasons.
posted by boaz at 6:35 PM on March 18, 2005
Perl: Personally, I use python, but perl still gets the nod as the trailblazer. It's really the go-to scripting language in the Unix world (and a lot of the Windows world too). Some people even try to do real work with it I hear. ;)
OpenSSL: having an open source collection of crypto routines has made encryption, secure hashing and secure key exchange virtually ubiquitous among developers. You'd be hard-pressed to find a sizable open-source project the doesn't use it for something nowadays.
And, uh, Linux and Firefox I guess. For all the obvious reasons.
posted by boaz at 6:35 PM on March 18, 2005
PHP, definitely. For reasons similar to the other "p" languages already mentioned.
I'd say Wiki as well, although it's more the philosophy of wiki than the software itself, which has been implemented so many different ways.
posted by O9scar at 6:59 PM on March 18, 2005
I'd say Wiki as well, although it's more the philosophy of wiki than the software itself, which has been implemented so many different ways.
posted by O9scar at 6:59 PM on March 18, 2005
Respect to the elders! The rise of the internet in every corportation on the backs of open source software like gcc, bind, sendmail, apache httpd, linux, *BSD and the like really opened the door for open source adoption in some corners of the IT world. That's where things happened first and over time, quality open source software will come to commoditize other parts of the industry.
Projects like postgress and mysql working to commoditize the database. Gnome and KDE on top of linux working to commoditize the desktop environment. OpenOffice working to commoditize the office apps.
As time goes on and people get comfortable with anonymous blobs of unaccountable people doing most of the work, pay software will be forced into niches as the general software needs will be commoditized and uninteresting! Software companies turn into solutions companies. I lose my job! Exciting!
Boy, got off track there a bit...
posted by cmm at 7:03 PM on March 18, 2005
Projects like postgress and mysql working to commoditize the database. Gnome and KDE on top of linux working to commoditize the desktop environment. OpenOffice working to commoditize the office apps.
As time goes on and people get comfortable with anonymous blobs of unaccountable people doing most of the work, pay software will be forced into niches as the general software needs will be commoditized and uninteresting! Software companies turn into solutions companies. I lose my job! Exciting!
Boy, got off track there a bit...
posted by cmm at 7:03 PM on March 18, 2005
David Wheeler has a nice list of the most mature and widely used open source projects. If you are interested in getting some good amunition for discussions/arguments about open source software, I've found his site to be pretty useful.
posted by octothorpe at 7:04 PM on March 18, 2005
posted by octothorpe at 7:04 PM on March 18, 2005
GCC. The world was a lot different back when everyone had to shell out big bucks for a compiler. Now that anyone can get developer tools for free, the barrier to entry is drastically smaller. I doubt we'd have anywhere near the amount of open source software available today, if not for GCC. (And this thread would be a whole lot shorter!)
posted by xil at 7:06 PM on March 18, 2005
posted by xil at 7:06 PM on March 18, 2005
It's worth repeating: Apache. Most popular web server in the world!
Open Office. An open source project that rivals not just MS Word, but Excel, Powerpoint and now Access.
As much as I hate to say it, PHP. PHP is to the web what Perl was almost 10 years ago, and (unfortunately) is way more noob friendly.
As great as Firefox is, I think it's overrated when compared to the Mozilla Suite, which has had email, chatzilla, venkman and lots of other stuff before Firefox was a Pheonix, and laid out the XUL framework as the new application framework (i might have this description wrong, but you should know what I'm getting at).
Although it's far from the best database, mySQL has brought the relational database to the masses.
I also think some other important ones are GNU, Snort, Nagios and PuTTy, not to mention things like Gnutella, and definitely BitTorrent, which completely broke the "more people download, the more bandwidth you need" paradigm.
posted by furtive at 7:13 PM on March 18, 2005
Open Office. An open source project that rivals not just MS Word, but Excel, Powerpoint and now Access.
As much as I hate to say it, PHP. PHP is to the web what Perl was almost 10 years ago, and (unfortunately) is way more noob friendly.
As great as Firefox is, I think it's overrated when compared to the Mozilla Suite, which has had email, chatzilla, venkman and lots of other stuff before Firefox was a Pheonix, and laid out the XUL framework as the new application framework (i might have this description wrong, but you should know what I'm getting at).
Although it's far from the best database, mySQL has brought the relational database to the masses.
I also think some other important ones are GNU, Snort, Nagios and PuTTy, not to mention things like Gnutella, and definitely BitTorrent, which completely broke the "more people download, the more bandwidth you need" paradigm.
posted by furtive at 7:13 PM on March 18, 2005
It really is tough to get it down to 5 or 2 or 10, isn't it? Realistically, looking back, Firefox should probably go from mine, and get replaced with Samba. Given the outrageous expense of Microsoft's Client Access License system, Samba was doubtless the foothold that got Unix/Linux into a ton of offices.
posted by boaz at 7:27 PM on March 18, 2005
posted by boaz at 7:27 PM on March 18, 2005
GCC is a big one -- the core complier of dozens of operating systems, including Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X.
For huge projects that you don't know about, the legendary trival hack turned major obsession TE? leaps out. Donald Knuth, the author, despaired at the state of mathematical typesetting while working on his monumnental work, The Art of Computer Programming that he took time off from it to write TE?, which now lives on computers across the land, when Word just won't do, esp. in the realms of mathematics and science.
posted by eriko at 7:30 PM on March 18, 2005
For huge projects that you don't know about, the legendary trival hack turned major obsession TE? leaps out. Donald Knuth, the author, despaired at the state of mathematical typesetting while working on his monumnental work, The Art of Computer Programming that he took time off from it to write TE?, which now lives on computers across the land, when Word just won't do, esp. in the realms of mathematics and science.
posted by eriko at 7:30 PM on March 18, 2005
Futz! Something happened, the correct spelling is TEΧ. Aha. On preview, I see that Χ gets re-rendered as X, I tried to correct it, then copy-and-pasted the error.
posted by eriko at 7:41 PM on March 18, 2005
posted by eriko at 7:41 PM on March 18, 2005
In order:
1) Firefox
2) Linux
3) Open Office
4) Apache
5) OpenSSH
6) *BSD (Free is more important, I prefer Open)
7) GCC
8) PHP
9) Postfix/Qmail
10) BIND (ugh, ugh, UGH) / djbdns
11) Nano
posted by Ryvar at 8:24 PM on March 18, 2005
1) Firefox
2) Linux
3) Open Office
4) Apache
5) OpenSSH
6) *BSD (Free is more important, I prefer Open)
7) GCC
8) PHP
9) Postfix/Qmail
10) BIND (ugh, ugh, UGH) / djbdns
11) Nano
posted by Ryvar at 8:24 PM on March 18, 2005
As one of the older and bigger instances of community development,
nethack!
posted by Aknaton at 8:43 PM on March 18, 2005
nethack!
posted by Aknaton at 8:43 PM on March 18, 2005
I'm not sure BIND gets the props it deserves, being the nameserver workhorse that it is and all... (I feel your pain, Ryvar... it is evil.)
posted by ph00dz at 10:26 PM on March 18, 2005
posted by ph00dz at 10:26 PM on March 18, 2005
Yes, *cough* "OpenOffice.org" is a mighty fine open source project...
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 11:35 PM on March 18, 2005
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 11:35 PM on March 18, 2005
PHP / MySQL / Apache
As a web developer I've had exposure to a lot of comparable commercial products, but these 3 all inspire and help me to make more from the web work than anything else.
If only the web & HTML would count as open source... that's the ultimate life-changer.
posted by bruceyeah at 1:37 AM on March 19, 2005
As a web developer I've had exposure to a lot of comparable commercial products, but these 3 all inspire and help me to make more from the web work than anything else.
If only the web & HTML would count as open source... that's the ultimate life-changer.
posted by bruceyeah at 1:37 AM on March 19, 2005
In rough descending order of importance, these are the free software projects I consider to be of utmost impact to the well-being of humankind:
gcc: because it completely changed the face of software development forever
every BSD forked from 4.3 which led to the creation of AT&T-royalty-free UNIX, and brought a reasonably portable TCP/IP stack and socket implementation to nearly every platform in the world.
ncurses: it's hard to appreciate how important ncurses really is, unless you have a fair understanding of just how ugly the terminal emulation world was until recently.
glibc: the basis for such a tremendous quantity of software that it's difficult to properly describe it's significance
perl: it may have its detractors, but it became and remains the scripting lingua franca of the Internet.
spamassassin: one of the first truly effective antispam tools in the modern ultra-spammed age, it remains a cornerstone of almost every good spam-free mail implementation.
readline: utterly changed the face of line mode applications
posted by majick at 1:44 AM on March 19, 2005
gcc: because it completely changed the face of software development forever
every BSD forked from 4.3 which led to the creation of AT&T-royalty-free UNIX, and brought a reasonably portable TCP/IP stack and socket implementation to nearly every platform in the world.
ncurses: it's hard to appreciate how important ncurses really is, unless you have a fair understanding of just how ugly the terminal emulation world was until recently.
glibc: the basis for such a tremendous quantity of software that it's difficult to properly describe it's significance
perl: it may have its detractors, but it became and remains the scripting lingua franca of the Internet.
spamassassin: one of the first truly effective antispam tools in the modern ultra-spammed age, it remains a cornerstone of almost every good spam-free mail implementation.
readline: utterly changed the face of line mode applications
posted by majick at 1:44 AM on March 19, 2005
Since you're polling people, and therefore need lots of votes...
Roughly in order: gcc, linux, gnu, openssh, x.org, openssl, apache, php, postfix, bind, xemacs, cvs, firefox, oo, gimp, mysql/postgresql, gaim.
I haven't used Windows since before XP, and I've used Linux as my primary desktop OS since before Windows 95. I couldn't survive without the above, the rest is gravy.
posted by togdon at 9:25 AM on March 19, 2005
Roughly in order: gcc, linux, gnu, openssh, x.org, openssl, apache, php, postfix, bind, xemacs, cvs, firefox, oo, gimp, mysql/postgresql, gaim.
I haven't used Windows since before XP, and I've used Linux as my primary desktop OS since before Windows 95. I couldn't survive without the above, the rest is gravy.
posted by togdon at 9:25 AM on March 19, 2005
I think people have hit the most "significant" - here are a few that i consider to be indispensible:
- ping
- traceroute
- | (the pipe)
- grep
- vi (ducks)
- X
posted by dammitjim at 10:54 AM on March 19, 2005
- ping
- traceroute
- | (the pipe)
- grep
- vi (ducks)
- X
posted by dammitjim at 10:54 AM on March 19, 2005
apache, mozilla/firefox/etc, gcc, php, bsd (adopted as the base of OS X), openssh.
posted by mosch at 11:44 AM on March 19, 2005
posted by mosch at 11:44 AM on March 19, 2005
I don't think flat project numbers really tells the story. OSS has been very influential in several areas. I put some of the above into what I'd suggest.
Internet/network: Apache, sendmail, wiki's, the underlying transport protocols
Languages: perl, php, numerous compiler implementations (gnu)
Platforms: linux
Databases: mySQL, PostgreSQL
The Desktop: OpenOffice, gimp, gaim, etc
I think it is a little bit more essoteric, but I strongly feel you could add "Knowledge" to the above. Blogs, wiki's, etc built on the above technologies are promoting the spread and accumulation of open knowledge.
posted by rudyfink at 1:09 PM on March 20, 2005
Internet/network: Apache, sendmail, wiki's, the underlying transport protocols
Languages: perl, php, numerous compiler implementations (gnu)
Platforms: linux
Databases: mySQL, PostgreSQL
The Desktop: OpenOffice, gimp, gaim, etc
I think it is a little bit more essoteric, but I strongly feel you could add "Knowledge" to the above. Blogs, wiki's, etc built on the above technologies are promoting the spread and accumulation of open knowledge.
posted by rudyfink at 1:09 PM on March 20, 2005
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by amberglow at 6:18 PM on March 18, 2005