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Innovation in Open Source Software?

Posted by Cliff on from the it-doesn't-come-from-just-the-big-fish dept.

ndogg asks: "Many have said that there is a lack of innovation in OSS software, and tend to talk about the big projects, like Mozilla and the Linux kernel. However, I would contend that innovation is quite abound in OSS, but that the problem is the spotlight is rarely shown upon those projects that are truly innovative. For example, I would contend that Data Display Debugger (DDD) and The Boost C++ Libraries are quite unique and innovative projects. What OSS projects do you feel are innovative, but underapreciated?"

4 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Extensions around Firefox browser by prostoalex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Firefox browser by itself is pretty nice, but the barebones edition does not really offer much added value compared to IE or Opera. The extensions, however, are amazing, I sometimes browse their extensions catalog just to see what I am missing, or make sure I don't miss articles like this to see what the other folks are using.

  2. Bittorrent by woobieman29 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    'Nuff said

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  3. I nominate the LiveCD by kbielefe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My laptop hard drive crashed (tinkling noise and all) about two years ago and I haven't bothered to replace it thanks to the wonderful invention that is Knoppix. That still amazes me.

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  4. Don't forget the early "open source" projects by ekuns · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Much of the Internet runs on software that was open source in some way early on -- such as bind, sendmail, perl, the original web browser (Mosaic), and so on. How many of the "backbone of the Internet" common RFC's have been implemented in open source from the get go?

    Don't forget code from DECUS and other such collaborative projects.

    Many of the open source projects that people are most familiar with (because it's software they interact with in an obvious way) may seem like a "copy of an existing closed source project," but under the hood there is a lot of innovate software that quietly runs things. Also don't forget that much of what open source is said to copy is software concepts that started out open before the commercial world threw money at it (think, Internet Explorer).

    Keep in mind that the amount of software the average user encounters in an obvious way is not huge. It's things like the windowing system and an office suite and a browser, plus some other apps.

    When open source or academics or other groups come up with something new and innovative, the commercial companies very often copy it themselves. People who come along later and don't know the history might look at later open source projects and say that they are just implementing what commercial companies have implemented.