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Large Open-Source Based Web Sites?

Posted by Cliff on from the for-your-information dept.

nellardo asks: "I know that, these days, most web sites are running on Apache and many are running on Linux or some flavor of BSD as well. But what are the biggest sites that go beyond that? We've talked about open-source application servers and the like here before, but where are these being used? Why do I ask? Well, duh, I'm trying to convince management :-) Seriously, CMP uses Mason and Slashdot uses Slashcode, but what are some of the other large ones?"

5 comments

  1. Not a big market? Or an untapped one? by AtariDatacenter · · Score: 2
    You know, off the top of my head, I really can't think of much more in the way of Open Source Web Sites. Well, depending on how you define it.

    If you define it as a "complete and whole ball of wax from a-z ready to form a complete site (with some tweaking)" like Slash Code is, no. I don't think there's a lot. I'd love to see more software like that which could be put together and aimed at a particular niche (again like Slash Code can).

    The major success I see is in all the little pre-packaged open source code snippets that make their way into web sites. Comment pages, voting booths, form processors, and more. That's the great success that I see here. The bits and pieces that enhance a site.

  2. A project I wanted to share... by AtariDatacenter · · Score: 2
    I wanted to share a project that I started, but didn't complete, which would make an excellent piece of open source software like you described which could be used for a multitude of purposes. It's called OpenVAC (the OPEN Video Arcade Collecting application).

    The site works off of a hierarchy, like Yahoo. But each page in the tree has its own miniture database which can be configured to display a number of different type boxes (messages, links, pictures, etc). The idea is, in a niche, you could go very in-depth and have a wealth of information, well categorized, that a major index site could never compete with.

    I've aimed mine at arcade games right now. If you go to the home page, go to the "Games" subcat, then "Titles", then "C", then "Centipede" for an example. Then, say, click on "Atari Lighted Button". Yes, it can be self referencing.

    The idea is that you could take a piece of software like this (...if it was open source -- its not because I've never finished it and it uses a mish-mash of bad technologies on the back-end...) and apply it to a niche with some minor tweaking.

    This is the kind of Open Source web software I want to see! PS: Yes, I've hijacked the OpenVAC site to create the page that you also see in my tag line ... but it does show the versitility of the idea. Wish I got the message area working. (sigh). Of course, if someone wants to hire me... :)

  3. Various packages by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You could take a look at the website of Zope, a major web-content package, and see their list of users. Also useful is PHP, perl.com, python.org... mySql, PostgreSql. I'm sure all these sites have a great number of testimonials, and it would not be difficult to see a number of featured large websites that run using those technologies. Even in-depth case studies.

    I imagine kuro5hin.org could also be considered a large site.

  4. some slashcode sites by grammar+nazi · · Score: 3
    I don't know of any other open-sourced sites (this is the point of your post). I don't think that website code is as likely to be under the GPL because it typically isn't distributed. If someone comes up with good code, the don't distribute it, they use it on their own website.

    Anyone with a little perl knowledge can go a long way towards making a slashcode site into a customer support, file download, or of course a news and events website.

    Anyways, here's the slashsites in case anyone is interested.

    Obtained from Slashcode
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    Keeping /. free of grammatical errors for ~5 years.
  5. OSS Auction sites by DaveHowe · · Score: 2
    You might want to check out this OSS package:

    http://www.everysoft.com/auction/

    apparently quite a few of the medium-sized auction sites use that code....
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    -=DaveHowe=-