They are -Mozilla Firefox, Wikipedia, and Linux.
That’s a huge dent in our mind space which otherwise is dominated by products from Microsoft and Apple.
These three are flag bearers of the open source software movement.
Many others are running alongside (Apache Web Server, Symbian OS, OpenOffice, Arduino etc).
Here we will talk about open source software.
Open source software is different from free software.
But at the user level, for the layman, this distinction assumes less importance.
Most times, open source software is the seed for free software.
So let’s check out what’s happening in the open source community.
It is its bookmark worthy quality that takes it to the top of any list of open source projects.
It is the world’s largest open source software development website.
The sheer numbers - 2 million registered users and 230,000 software projects say that aloud.
Codeplex
Codeplex is Microsoft’s open source project hosting website.
It has a large concentration of projects built around .Net.
It also hosts a few projects which have non-open source licenses attached to them.
Codeplex allows shared development in one project.
Support is provided with tools like a proprietary Codeplex source control software, wikis, and discussion boards.
As of January, 2010, the site hosts nearly 13,000 projects.
Currently the site hosts nearly 250,000 open source projects.
it’s possible for you to download open source code and patches.
Mac users can find nearly 3,600+ projects related to their OS.
Users can keep track of what’s new in Linux and UNIX by browsing through the nicely tagged projects.
The articles on new software developments also keep users in the know.
Freshmeat is owned by Geeknet, which also has Sourceforge.net in its lineup.
The site has three areas - Archive, Community and Sourced.
TheArchiveis the searchable index of open source software that is contributed by the open source developers.
With the important difference that Ohloh does not host open source projects.
It is more like a public directory of the open source community and the software they develop.
Ohloh also has some tools which can be used to map out the trends in the open source universe.
it’s possible for you to compare projects and measure the amount of activity that project is having.
Also like a social site, you could follow developers whose work you are interested in.
Tigris.org
The tagline of this web resource reads -Open Source Software Engineering Tools.
It has a few concentrated categories mostly around software development.
It is a categorized index of free software that runs on free operating systems (GNU and Linux).
There is no free lunch; so goes the popular saying.
The abundant availability of free andopen sourcesoftware thankfully belies the fact.
Just imagine a world where open source did not exist.
It would have been such a narrow existence.
Image Credit:Wikimedia Commons
