Top Ten Open Source Projects

arclightfire writes "We recently wrote an article for The Independent listing the top ten open source projects. It was hard getting the list down to ten, but we did; here's the top ten - Wikipedia, Firefox, Open Office, Bittorrent, MediaWiki, Xvid, pbb, Outfoxed, dyne:bolic, GIMP, Apache and SourceForge." What would you call your favorite projects? Obviously, this list isn't strictly software projects, so be creative.

Comments

Erm

[squoozer]

Slashdot of course :o)

Re:Erm

[Pieroxy]

On a side note:
It was hard getting the list down to ten, but we did; here's the top ten: *enumerating 12 items*

It was indeed pretty hard, so hard that the editor couldn't resist the temptation to slip 12 in there!

lol
--
George Herriman's Krazy Kat

Re:Erm

[daeg]

Why the hell is PHPBB on their list? PHPBB is one of the biggest software trainwrecks I have ever seen. It started as a distaster and still is today. New versions just make it worse. It is a mix of coding styles and theories (object vs. procedural, amongst others), their templating system is dismal, and integrating your site with phpbb is asking for disaster. Just because a project is popular does not mean it is worthy of any top 10 list.

Re:Erm

[joeljkp]

phpbb brought forums to the masses. It's much more deserving of a place on the list than a beautifully-written forum that nobody uses.

Re:Erm

[nametaken]

Not to mention a "sly declaration of new classic status slipped into a bunch of safe ones- very pussy."

Seriously, dyne:bolic and Outfoxed are two of the top 10 Open Source projects?

Not PHP, not Ubuntu... a multimedia studio live CD and a documentary about how much people hate fox news? Vury Schneaky!

Re:Erm

[RockDoctor]

It was hard getting the list down to ten, but we did; here's the top ten: *enumerating 12 items*

It was indeed pretty hard, so hard that the editor couldn't resist the temptation to slip 12 in there!
It's inverse decimalisation : 12 of the old items equals 1.2 of the new decimalised "long" Items.

(Idea stolen from Flanders & Swann http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanders_and_Swann , but old long before then. But that's probably before the parents of most Slashdotters were born, let alone the Slashdotties themselves.)

Ummmmmmm.....?

[diamondmagic]

Linux?

Re:Ummmmmmm.....?

[oneiros27]

It would be one of the top open source projects, but it seems that the blurb posted on slashdot, and the actual article don't match. The article states:

Ana Kronschnabl and Tomas Rawlings pick the best open source websites where users can change the content

Which of course ... would be open content, not open source. (unless the users can change the code used to drive the websites, perhaps).

Re:Ummmmmmm.....?

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, it's PhpBB, not pbb. You know, as in code for a bb written in Php. Not sure that one deserves top ten...

Re:Ummmmmmm.....?

[smagruder]

What makes phpBB superior to others is its mod community, similar to how Firefox's available extensions make it superior to IE. Yeah, phpBB out of the box is rather bland, but that's actually good... the code is generally well-structured and easy to extend. So, if you're a half-decent programmer, you've got a really good base product you can make into your own vision for a discussion board.

Re:Ummmmmmm.....?

[gbjbaanb]

If that was the case, why would xVid, Firefox, openoffice, GIMP, and dyne:bolic be listed? They're hardly websites now are they. Really seems they've missed some bloody damn obvious ones (like Linux, d'uh, or Eclipse) or they've just knocked up some spacefiller article for a newspaper that doesn't know or care about the subject.

Re:Ummmmmmm.....?

[oneiros27]

I think you've hit the nail on the head... The two descriptions don't match, and the list doesn't fit either one of the descriptions.

(I'd mod you up, but I've already posted)

Re:Ummmmmmm.....?

[hackwrench]

At first I thought it might be that they all have wikis:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox:Home_Page
But I couldn't find one for XVid.

The list seems geared towards editing, viewing or transferring media.

Re: Ummmmmmm.....?

[Omniscient Ferret]

...they've missed some bloody damn obvious ones (like Linux, d'uh, or Eclipse)

What is this d'uh software of which you speak? With a moronic name like that it has to be good!

Re:Ummmmmmm.....?

[strikethree]

let's not forget gcc. it is the foundation for many (majority?!) open source projects.

strike

Re:Ummmmmmm.....?

[TheTomcat]

If you're into running software that's got one of the worst security track records in the PHP community...

Many phpBB users are switching away from phpBB to FUDForum. It's not as malleable, but you won't have to patch and pray every 3 or 4 days.

S

Re:Ummmmmmm.....?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fitting that you would recommend FUD when your post is full of it.

phpBB has currently had 19 releases since it's initial March 3, 2002 release (ref). How the fuck you would construe this to every 3 or 4 days is beyond me. You know - if you don't care about factual accuracy (and you obviously don't, since your post doesn't contain any) why not deny the Holocaust, as well? Obviously that didn't happen, did it? Obviously, it's all an anti-semetic plot, isn't it? Fucker.

Re:Ummmmmmm.....?

[GuyRCook]

I see on places like netcraft.com that some hosts are dropping phpBB for other forum applications, due to the high levels of support required by that top ten listee. I don't use it anymore after reading about so many exploits.

Re:Ummmmmmm.....?

[flunkee]

Redundant? Consider Wikipedia, phpBB, Firefox, OpenOffice, dyne:bolic, bitorrent, GIMP, MediaWiki, Apache and Sourceforge. For the most part, were created in, born of, or cater to the Linux environment... There'd be a Top Ten just for Linux builds or projects....

Errr....kinda missing one

[ilovegeorgebush]

Wtf happened to Linux in the list?...

RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about "...best open source websites where users can change the content" and not best open source projects. It comes that even posters don't RTFA.

Re:RTFA

[BenjyD]

But how can I change the content on http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/? I would guess that there was a confusion between the author and whoever wrote the summary at the Indy. Another reason for the "Independent isn't a serious newspaper any more" pile, perhaps?

Re:RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, probably your are right. Although there is at least one wiki I know of (http://developer.mozilla.org/) this is not specifically firefox related. They just wanted to jump on the hype wagon and don't miss firefox on their list, I guess.

Their arguments sound a bit like, "we included it since this is the tool you can view websites with and use the editing facilities provided by the wikis and alike."

Re:RTFA

[GweeDo]

I would assume they mean through extensions.

Re:RTFA

[swillden]

I would guess that there was a confusion between the author and whoever wrote the summary at the Indy. Another reason for the "Independent isn't a serious newspaper any more" pile, perhaps?

Do you really think a serious newspaper would understand the distinction between open source and open content either?

"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[mnmn]

How about the Bible, Quran and Torah?

How about All classical music? (not just western)

How about the SI metric standards?

Or the Human genome? ...lets stick to software projects.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[mwvdlee]

How about the Bible, Quran and Torah?

Hm yes, let's change some of the texts in those books. I'm sure it'll go down well with the readers.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm yes, let's change some of the texts in those books. I'm sure it'll go down well with the readers.

People who actually believe that drivel people do it all the time and pass it off like that is how it's always been. 1984, anyone? It's called adapting religion in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[incubusnb]

you ever read multiple versions of the bible? I assure you, words and passages are completely rewritten from version to version.

The King James Bible is very different from the American Standard bible, which, despite being in another language, is damn near a complete rewrite of the original bible.

I'm nowhere near a bible-thumper, but one thing i do know about it, is that the modern bible is written by humans, and changed by humans, regardless who wrote the original version(whom I think where still humans)

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[salparadyse]

Unfortunately the Chief Coder in the Sky said "change the words in this book and you'll be very very sorry you did". The Bible is NOT open source.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Anonymous Coward]

(posting anonymous as to not be considered a karma-whore, even though i don't care about karma)
to illustrate my point:
http://www.chick.com/information/bibleversions/com parison.asp

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[massivefoot]

Whether or not you believe it should be open source, it's pretty hard to deny that it has become such. The earliest Bibles in existence are in Hebrew right? (If anyone can clarify whether they are or not please do). Any translation, no matter how true to the original you attempt to be, will always be stamped with the translater's personal bias to some degree.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Anonymous Coward]

obviously Someone wasn't listening when that rule was made

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Comboman]

Yes but the translated, biased versions are copyrighted. Only the orginals (and any translations more than 70 years old) are public domain. It may be "open source" but it is certainly not using the GNU license.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[TERdON]

That's exactly what Martin Luther did...

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[DarkSarin]

Disclaimer--I am not a theologian nor "Bible Expert". That said I do have some knowledge--My dad spoke most of the languages that were used in writing various parts of the Bible, being an expert himself.

The Bible was not written in any one language originally, nor was it written by a single person. Anyone who makes that type of claim is severely deluded.

The Old Testament (Genesis through Malachi) was written in Hebrew, but not modern Hebrew. Some parts were written in a form of Hebrew that did not make use of vowels. Talk to an expert about this--my Hebrew is limited to recognizing the script and few historical notes.

The New Testament, before the Catholics compiled it, was written in a variety of languages, including both Greek and Aramaic (which is probably what Christ spoke). At some point the Catholic Church (Roman), decided that everything should be in Latin, and only distributed the scripture in that language. Various editions have been translated from both the Latin or from more ancient documents. Many of the documents that are out there are so far from the "original" that there is little, if any, hope of knowing exactly how they read.

Additionally, remember that even the oldest versions in existence today are both ancient and very likely copies (especially with the Old Testament), which means that they have been both translated and transscribed numerous times. So while I believe that the Bible is scripture, and that much of it (not all) was inspired by God, there is a strong need to be very careful in how one interprets the meanings.

Being a member of the LDS church, I have my own beliefs about what should be done to properly understand the Bible, but that opinion is even less popular than even believing in God in the first place (which in these parts can be a dangerous viewpoint).

As for being open source, that is out of the question. Public domain != open source. In the case of the Bible, the license (from the Man Himself) allows anyone to publish or distribute the work, but prohibits one from changing the source to help prevent bugs from creeping in. A lot folks have ignored this restriction, resulting in much chaos, but that's another story.

Hope this helped.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[endoplasmicMessenger]

I assure you, words and passages are completely rewritten from version to version.

I think you meant retranslated.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[endoplasmicMessenger]

Unfortunately, the SCM (Scroll Configuration Management) on the original Hebrew and Greek was imperfect.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Anonymous Coward]

yes he did.

and i dont recall it being a smooth well accepted transition.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Firewalker_Midnights]

You left out the most important of them all... ...The Alan Parsons Project.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Cybersaint2k]

While the parent humbly admits that he's not an expert or theologian, I must admit that I am. And his father taught him well; everything he says is accurate concerning the linguistic history of the Bible. Except that I would say it is a certainty that all our oldest texts from which we translate the Bible into various languages are copies. Anti-*nix OS Troll-boy who started this Bible thread should not be modded insightful. Where are my meta-mod points....

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[ilovemrdoe]

Does that make it open source?

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[meringuoid]

Hm yes, let's change some of the texts in those books. I'm sure it'll go down well with the readers.

Well, weren't they all the same project originally? St Paul forked the Torah, and then Mohammed did the same a few centuries later? They're still open-source, then.

Personally, I'd want someone to go in and fix some of the more dangerous exploits in the code. The bit about 'while I'm not around, kids, please obey my official representative, MR BLACK! I'll be coming along real soon now, but for now here's MR BLACK!' has got to be sorted out.

Oh, and a there are a good few bugs related to conflicting definitions early on in the codebase. The scope of 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' and the scope of 'Kill all the unbelievers in the land I have given to you' really need to be more clearly defined.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[DDLKermit007]

Sure if you mean retranslated to fit what a bunch of dead guys in power a few hundred centuries ago wanted changed. What we have now have in all of the current versions of the Bibles is extremely different since generaly the original version that didn't have edits were usualy destroyed fairly eaisily before the advent of presses.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the points that has been made before. Books are, by their nature, open source. And I've never seen a biblicist shy about sharing that source with anyone and everyone.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[malraid]

Migraine Boy

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[narsiman]

Sure. Try making (or even suggest) a change to any of these three and be ready to have a fatwa on your head.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[tbischel]

"As for being open source, that is out of the question. Public domain != open source. In the case of the Bible, the license (from the Man Himself) allows anyone to publish or distribute the work, but prohibits one from changing the source to help prevent bugs from creeping in."

it doesnt seem to work that way in practice. Your man Joseph Smith put his own additions in (companion book, but close enough). At some point, someone had to decide to exclude many of the dead sea scrolls. Even looking at different versions today... NIV, King James, NLV, NASB... could be seen as open source modifications, attempts by translators to clarify intent, but little other than interpretation in common with the origonal.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the Catholic Church (Roman) did not "decide" to write everything in Latin. At that time, the headquarters were in Rome and the current language there was Latin. Would you call Bush writing USA laws in English a "decision"? I really can't understand why Italians now decided to write their books and their newspapers in Italian!

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[tootlemonde]

In the case of the Bible, the license (from the Man Himself) allows anyone to publish or distribute the work...

The right to publish and distribute the Word of God, at least in translation, is one area where the laws of man supercede the laws of God.

The King James Version is still under copyright in England and in those areas of the Commonwealth that still respect the laws of Great Britian. In those countries the Bible can only be printed under license from Oxford and Cambridge, which administer the Crown's copyright.

The New International Version, published in 1973, specifies as follows:

The text may be quoted in any form (written, visual, electronic or audio), up to and inclusive of five hundred (500) verses without the express written permission of the publisher, providing the verses quoted do not amount to a complete book of the Bible nor do the verses quoted account for 25 percent (25%) or more of the total text of the work in which they are quoted.

Considering there are so many unrighteous people who would steal the intellectual labour of Biblical scholars and try to undercut their cover price, the arguments in favour of copyright might apply as much to the Bible as any other published work.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[MirrororriM]

Some parts were written in a form of Hebrew that did not make use of vowels

N vwls? Tht wld rll sck!

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[An Onerous Coward]

Smith didn't just write/translate/dig up/ymmv a "companion book". He also went into the Bible proper and made lots of changes (which he called corrections). The results of this effort are called "The Joseph Smith Translation" within the LDS Church. Some of his changes seem rather self-serving. For example, in Genesis 50, the Joseph who was the son of Jacob gives a rather short death speech. But Joseph Smith turned it into a much more elaborate speech wherein Joseph Smith's own career is prophesied.

The LDS party line is that the Bible was corrupted over the centuries, and that the Joseph Smith Translation (though incomplete and not official) is inspired by God and uniquely true to the original Bible. Yet there isn't any manuscript evidence for any of Smith's changes. Funny that.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[salparadyse]

Hmmmm. I sort of meant the message rather than the literal sequence of letters as originally written down. Example; Let mercy triumph over judgement. As long as it is faithfully translated the meaning remains the same. To take that sentence and make it into say; "Let mercy triumph over judgement if the accused can pay a hefty bribe" would be to unfaithfully translate it. Of course, the Bible being closed source only works if you actually believe in/fear God. If neither of those describes your inner state then I guess anything goes and my original post falls down somewhat.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Kiryat Malachi]

You realize that modern Hebrew is often written without the vowel markings, although including vowel characters, right? While liturgical texts usually include vowel markings, including the hand-written text that forms a set of Torah scrolls, most secular writings don't.

While your point is correct (the Old Testament wasn't written by a single writer, nor in a single period of time), your using the "form without vowels" argument isn't providing any strength to your point.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[pjt33]

At some point, someone had to decide to exclude many of the dead sea scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are from a non-Christian Jewish community. The works which are unique to them are of some interest to Christians in providing some insight into the background of first century Palestine, but they have no claim whatsoever to be in the New Testament.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a member of the LDS church, I have my own beliefs about what should be done to properly understand the Bible

Why don't you just say: "Being a mormon...". I mean, is there some reason to try to disguise that? Besides, LDS church, sounds like a group of hippies high on LSD, not much help there.

Posting anonymously to follow your example of fake disguise. :)

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Anonymous Coward]

..but prohibits one from changing the source to help prevent bugs from creeping in. A lot folks have ignored this restriction..

Such as the LDS? Or did god inspire them to "correct" the mistakes that have been propagated for centuries? And if so why would the omnipotitent creator allow mistakes to exist for so long but only allow mormons to "see the light"?

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Wikipedia]

Have you ever read 2 Timothy 3:16: http://www.watchtower.org/bible/2ti/chapter_003.ht m http://www.christiananswers.net/bible/2tim3.html

All scripture [is] given by inspiration of God

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Thuktun]

Being a member of the LDS church, [...]

Darn it, you just made William Shatner appear in my mind's eye.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[tootlemonde]

Why don't you just say: "Being a mormon...".

"Mormon" is ambiguous since it can refer to various schismatic sects. According to an official press release of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

While the term "Mormon Church" has long been publicly applied to the Church as a nickname, it is not an authorized title, and the Church discourages its use.

When referring to Church members, the term "Latter-day Saints" is preferred, though "Mormons" is acceptable

He appears to be well within preferred and accepted usage to use "LDS". Wikipedia has an interesting item on what "Mormon" refers to.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[grimharvest]

Isn't anybody going to come right out and say it? That over time the Bible has been twisted, distorted and used by whomever needed it for whatever political or personal reasons they might have until now even if one is a Christian, there's little point in reading it. You might as well write a new one yourself.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Teogue]

A little more on topic, http://www.bibletime.info/index.htmlBibletime and http://www.crosswire.org/index.jspSword are open source, software, and decent projects at that.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dead Sea Scrolls are from a non-Christian Jewish community. The works which are unique to them are of some interest to Christians in providing some insight into the background of first century Palestine, but they have no claim whatsoever to be in the New Testament.

But they *do* contain large quantities of Old Testament writings that don't particularly jive with existing translations in many places. Why are these considered spurious and newer versions given preference? Just because the people that kept them were "weird"?

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Rebelgecko]

The president doesnt't write laws. Thats what the Congress is supposed to do.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[akorvemaker]

Just one little point (in case you're curious): the main reason the bible was translated into Latin (the version done by Jerome sometime around the year 400 is the most well-known) was primarily so that it would be accessible to the people. The Vulgate is named for being "vulgar", i.e. in the language of the people. In many areas at the time, the people spoke Latin and did not really understand the original languages.

It's really kind of funny how the translation that was made so that the people could understand it remained the standard long after the people moved on to other languages. A lot of history in there. Anyway.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Cybersaint2k]

Grimharvest came out of his cave and roared: "Isn't anybody going to come right out and say it? That over time the Bible has been twisted, distorted and used by whomever needed it for whatever political or personal reasons they might have until now even if one is a Christian, there's little point in reading it."

The reason people don't do this is there's no proof of that and thoughtful people don't write, for everyone and God to see, comments that are easily refuted.

Let me give you the overview--there are ancient copies of the Bible. Each division in the Bible (Law, prophets, writings, Gospels, Epistles, Apocrypha, Revelation, etc) has copies. Each book has individual copies, ranging from thousands and thousands (the book of John) of copies to comparatively few copies for others. Those copies are categorized by geography (east/west) and then further distinguished into what are called "families."

In the end, after you analyze the variances of the copies, you find that the copies form patterns that end up looking like a threaded forum. You can trace changes in the text back to the parent.

What has been discovered repeatedly, most highlighted in the Isaiah scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is that the changes that have taken place over the years have been miniscule.

But how minor? If you look at a Greek NT, you'll find odd numbers and letters. These numbers are verses and the letters are grades. The letters give a "grade" and sometimes the name of a specific codex or family or geographic region from which this reading came. C or D means there's healthy debate about which reading is correct, so the editors will give the name of both and the variant reading that might apply.

What I've found is that even at the highest level of scrutiny, the integrity of the text is preserved incredibly well.

You may disagree with the worldview, with the meanings of the words, with the whole idea of spirituality. Fine. But the preservation of the text of the Old and New Testament through the ages is quite remarkable.

Full disclosure: I am the editor of a study Bible project (www.bible.discovergod.org) and do textual analysis on the Bible every day. If the Bible is bunk, I have no job and, moreover, would fish on Sundays instead of preach.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[strikethree]

Being a member of the LDS church, I have my own beliefs about what should be done to properly understand the Bible, but that opinion is even less popular than even believing in God in the first place (which in these parts can be a dangerous viewpoint).

the problem is not that people believe in god. the problem is that many of the people who believe in god think that they should be telling others how to live their lives.

strike

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[maraist]

Oh, and a there are a good few bugs related to conflicting definitions early on in the codebase. The scope of 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' and the scope of 'Kill all the unbelievers in the land I have given to you' really need to be more clearly defined.

Dude, that's easy.. "Kill" is subjective, of course, just like the "fair use" clause in copyright law. And the subjectiveness is to be resolved by a "reasonable body". And of course, by reason, what we mean is "what could a judge get away with if he ruled one way or another". The judge that was in charge when that particular law was famously written (not that it was profound or original or anything) was Mosus.

Mosus was the judge and jury of his day.. And many a rabbi has used "case law" to affirm 'morality' ever since.. I wouldn't even notice such a peculiarity except for one of the few times when the books of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John refer to Mosus.. Specifically in discussion of divorse (an issue which provides me perverse joy in realizing that 60% of all proselytizing Christians are going to hell over by disobeying). Mosus "ruled" that divorse was 'legal' and hense moral. Jesus later repealed that law, stating that the moral authority was unduelly coersed.

Thus, morality is officially a humanly judicial act. You may famously ask yourself "What would (insert your favorite blasphemous idol here) do?", and that's great, until you realize that you know about as much of what an alleged omnipotent/omnicient/omnipresent being would do as an ant knows about filling out the deductions on your tax form.

So you have two choices.. Wait to have a psychadellic experience which would solidify your sense of truth, or accept that whether an effective omnicient/omnipotent power is dropping your clues out there or not, you have to rely on what your God-given senses provide to you (including the horribly under-recognized sense of memory).

Course that makes it hard for a governing body to convince people that Anarchy is really a bad idea. So on that thread.. Praise be to God. (My new Pascal philosophy)

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Octopus]

In the case of the Bible, the license (from the Man Himself) allows anyone to publish or distribute the work, but prohibits one from changing the source to help prevent bugs from creeping in. A lot folks have ignored this restriction, resulting in much chaos, but that's another story.

How dare they change the Bible Code! Especially since it isn't commented with PHPDoc! Sacrilege!

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[G00F]

I don't think quoting from Timothy is worth anything . . .

"Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." 1 Tim.2:11-12

I have yet to find a silent/quiet woman. I also do not see many women who do not have authority over a man.

More on topic, Sure al lscripture coems from god, but is scripture and what isn't?

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Wikipedia]

It's referring to authority, not every possible situation.

It's nice to see someone on slashdot interested in religion.

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[grimharvest]

And if the Bible was bunk, how exactly would you know it if the entire basis of it is faith-based anyway?

Re:"this list isn't strictly software projects"

[Cybersaint2k]

That's a fair question, Grimharvest.

I think the answer lies in understanding what faith is and is not. The short version: Faith and reason not enemies, but friends. They both inform and neither can exist without the other. If the Bible is bunk, then no faith in the world can save it. If the Bible is true, alternatively, your lack of faith does is no damage. All faith is reasonable--the object of your faith can't be A and not A at the same time and in the same relationship. And all reason demands faith in the presuppositions underneath it--unless you are an antifoundationalist, which is crazy talk to me.

Let me answer it more personally.

For me, faith and reason are friends--not enemies. Reason gives content and structure to the various aspects of anything I believe/put my faith in. Faith gives foundational structures on which I may then postulate, talk about, dream about, reason. As Augustine said, "I believe (that is, have faith) that I may understand."

Faith is a trust in ideas or persons that I cannot fully grasp by pure reason. I can tell if my faith is misplaced by whether when I put the lenses of faith on, the world appears clearer or foggier; or whether my inner world appears more or less sensical.

Sometimes truth takes time--sometimes matters of faith can fool you, appearing to be true, but really you only saw the edge of it and guessed wrong about the rest. Eh. You shrug and pray and learn and show more due diligence the next time.

I hope that helps.

Best projects

[squoozer]

Some that aren't in the list but I use regularly.

I suppose the kernel has got to feature in the list because without it a lot of other projects are fairly pointless. I like NetBeans (although it's giving me grief today). Amarok is pretty good (but is let down by the poor state of sound on Linux). KMail is very nice especially as part of Kontact. Synaptic is a very nice project that seems to be coming along well.

Re:Best projects

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose the kernel has got to feature in the list because without it a lot of other projects are fairly pointless.

I don't know, the BSD's kernels do a fairly good job of running KDE and other K programs that you cited. Heck, so does OS X's (and likely countless others) for that matter.

Re:Best projects

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe no one has mentioned audacity. If you count GIMP then how can audacity not be in the mix?

Summary and headline wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Summary is completely wrong. Read the first sentence of the article.

"Ana Kronschnabl and Tomas Rawlings pick the best open source websites where users can change the content"

dyne:bolic?

[md81544]

dyne:bolic

"Dyne:bolic is a multimedia studio on a CD that you simply pop into any computer and start it up, instantly turning it into a Linux/GNU [sic] system"

Why not Knoppix??? Granted, this is more specialised towards creative people, but it never figures on my top ten, whereas Knoppix would do.

Re: dyne:bolic?

[torpor]

i would say because dyne:bolic is more 'multimedia-oriented' than knoppix, which is still fairly generic/general purpose.

with dyne:bolic, any PC becomes a multimedia production studio in a heartbeat (well, bootup, anyway), and you really can get to creating with it fast and easily .. this is important in this day of "iWhatever" style apps being churned out by the big-nerds, so i'd wager thats why dyne:bolic is being pitched, in lieu of knoppix.

which isn't to say knoppix isn't cool .. but its certainly not the first, nor the last, linux-booting liveCD with productivity tools on it (far as i can remember, yggdrasil was first..)

Re: dyne:bolic?

[m50d]

Because knoppix sucks in comparison to more modern efforts. It's just going on the name these days. dyne:bolic has better state saving, and actually focuses on and does something better than windows (multimedia), rather than giving you basically a worse equivalent to the OS you're already running.

Re: dyne:bolic?

[Hosiah]

I just tried Dyne:bolic 1.4.1 and was quite well impressed with it. It's a distro with a soul! I gave it a decent review in my blog. That being said, even I wouldn't rank it above Knoppix. But I can see where it deserves recognition: the project aims to aid in those areas of multimedia freedom that we're all wringing our hands over this past year, so maybe it got hedged in for being topically current.

Non-Software Option

[Anonymous Coward]

Democracy?

Eclipse

[thammoud]

I would have to say that Eclipse is one of the most important open source projects out there. Thousands of developers use the Eclipse IDE for day to day developement of enterprise Java applications.

Re:Eclipse

[AwaxSlashdot]

I wish I hadn't spent all my Mod points. I would have mod parent UP UP UP.

Re:Eclipse

[hweimer]

I would have to say that Eclipse is one of the most important open source projects out there. Thousands of developers use the Eclipse IDE for day to day developement of enterprise Java applications.

How can a Java IDE be one of the most important Open Source projects when there is no usable Open Source Java implementation available?

Re:Eclipse

[Anonymous Coward]

How can any Open Souce project be important when there are no usable completely open source hardware implementations of the PC? You proprietary CPU user traitor you...
I bet you don't even use the Open Source graphics card. Splitter!

Re:Eclipse

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! I'm executing all my open source software on open source papyrus, with an open source piece of charcoal. And let me tell you, compiling Gentoo is a bitch.

Re:Eclipse

[jtwJGuevara]

How can a Java IDE be one of the most important Open Source projects when there is no usable Open Source Java implementation available?

Well, although its just a JRE, I find that Eclipse runs fine using the blackdown JRE. I haven't developed using the blackdown sdk, but I'd consider running eclipse just fine at least one point in favor of blackdown's usabiliy as a Java environment.

Secondly, Eclipse is more than a Java IDE. It has so many damn plugins it literally is a swiss army knife, albeit a bloated one. I personally use pydev for eclipse as my python editor.

Re:Eclipse

[mrcparker]

Blackdown is proprietary.

Re:Eclipse

[Jack9]

Because Eclipse isn't just a Java IDE anymore? Is Linux just a unix microkernel implementation?

Re:Eclipse

[jtwJGuevara]

I stand corrected :)

Re:Eclipse

[shaka]

How can a Java IDE be one of the most important Open Source projects when there is no usable Open Source Java implementation available?

Eclipse runs very nicely with GCJ thank you very much.

Re:Eclipse

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux isn't a microkernel, it's monolithic.

Re:Eclipse

[Jack9]

Grrr, yur right.

top twelve?

[irtza]

here's the top ten - 1) Wikipedia 2) Firefox 3) Open Office 4) Bittorrent 5) MediaWiki 6) Xvid 7) pbb 8) Outfoxed 9) dyne:bolic 10) GIMP 11) Apache 12) SourceForge Front page posts never have errors, so I know I messed something up... what gives? and one more thing, what is pbb?

Re:top twelve?

[coolcold]

maybe you have messed up the fact that it's not a front page article? :)
j/k

Re:top twelve?

[SumpyGump]

I think pbb is phpBB. Not sure, though. I think their should have been links in the article summary to all these websites.

Re:top twelve?

[southpolesammy]

• Wikipedia
  
• Firefox
  
• OpenOffice
  
• BitTorrent
  
• MediaWiki
  
• Xvid
  
• phpBB
  
• Outfoxed
  
• Dyne:bolic
  
• GIMP
  
• Apache
  
• SourceForge
  

(Pardon the following, but need to fill space to meet /.'s ridiculous lameness filter and char/line quotas....)

1111111111 111111111 11111111111 111 1111111111111
222222 22222222 222222222222 2222222222222 222222222222 22222222222
33333333333333 333333333333333 333333333 3333333333333333 333333333333 333333333
4444444444 444444444 4444444444444 44444444444444
55555555 555555 5555555 55555555 5555555555555555
666666 666666666666 66666666666 6666666666666 66666666666666 666666666

For me the winner is TrueCrypt

[Anonymous Coward]

(I'm not sure what pbb, Outfoxed, and dyne:bolic are.)

Personally I'd include TrueCrypt, which is open-source and free disk encryption for Windows and Linux. This software is simply amazing.

pbb?

[Anonymous Coward]

here's the top ten - Wikipedia, Firefox, Open Office, Bittorrent, MediaWiki, Xvid, pbb, Outfoxed, dyne:bolic, GIMP, Apache and SourceForge.

In case, like me, you're wondering what on earth "pbb" is, let me spare you the searching:

"pbb" at Wikipedia redirects to "Polybrominated biphenyls", with no disambiguation link.

"pbb" on Google returns nothing remotely related to open source.

"pbb open source" on Google returns phpBB at the top.

So why the zark does the summary say "pbb"?

GNU/Linux Foundation?

[xcomm]

I think without the GNU foundation framework (compiler, libraries, shell etc.) and the Linux Kernel there would be nothing with FOSS. Without all the foundation under the the GPL there would be nothing to build on for the other prograsms.

BTW: Where the hell is LAMP in the top 10? Apache would be nothing without Perl, PHP, Phyton, MySQL or PostGresSQL.

Re:GNU/Linux Foundation?

[gscrivano]

I completely agree, without GNU and the GPL a lot of projects were not possible at all.

Re:GNU/Linux Foundation?

[LWATCDR]

No not really. Open Souce would still exist without Linux. Firefox and OpenOffice all runs just fine under Windows. The you have the BSD family. If BSD had not been tied up in legal knots Linux might not have gotten as far as it has.
As to Apache being nothing without Perl, PHP, Python,... Apache was a good webserver long before LAMP took off. CGI doesn't have to be done in Perl or Python. Ruby, c, and even lisp have been used.
I think that list is pretty much worthless but to bash one project or an other is pretty pointless.
My list would inlcude.

gcc
bind
sendmail
apache
perl
Linux
MySql
BSD
OpenOffice
Firefox

gcc because so many open source programs use it.
Bind, sendmail. apache, perl Linux, and MySql because they really where the foundation of most of the Internet.
If you wanted a server back in the good old days and couldn't spend the money for a Sun or a VAX your choices where pretty much Linux or one of the BSDs. Did you know Yahoo used BSD for all it's servers. I don't know if they have moved to Linux or not. Microsoft used BSD code for the TCP/IP stack in Windows.
OpenOffice and Firefox because they are bringing open source to the masses.
There are many great OSS projects I did not put on my list. I use PostgresSQL everyday and I like it better than MySQL but it isn't as popular. Python, Ruby, and PHP are also great projects. GIMP and it GTK foundation are very important. Any of these could be somebody's top ten list. Bit Torrent is going to cause more grief for media companies than just about anything we can imagine. It isn't about the piracy. It is the lack of control. Somebody going to combine a good writer, good actors, BitTorrent, and a good business person and create a direct to internet runaway show. TiVO, Replay, or Apple will add it to it's listings and it will take off. No network or media company required. BitTorrent levels the playing field. Distribution becomes more or less free.
Outfoxed? Never heard of it before now but then documentaries about what I am actually doing are of little interest to me. I would rather live it than watch it.
What to know what I think may be the next huge open source project? GAIM. More people may end up using GAIM than OpenOffice.

Re:GNU/Linux Foundation?

[Jack9]

, perl Linux, and MySql because they really where the foundation of most of the Internet

Um, Linux? I don't think so. It's big NOW, which is a far cry from "foundation". We might have to get in to when the internet really formed, but I think that's a false statement on its face.

Re:GNU/Linux Foundation?

[poot_rootbeer]

Apache would be nothing without Perl, PHP, Phyton, MySQL or PostGresSQL.

Are you kidding.

Websites with fully-static content existed for years, and still do. Please tell me you're not suggesting that EVERY web site has to have a scripting language and a SQL database running on the backend to be worth anything.

Re:GNU/Linux Foundation?

[LWATCDR]

It is debatable as are a lot of things on any list. BSD I feel has a stronger claim than Linux but I was talking about the Internet after 1990. It seemed like in the early days at least half of the ISPs and web hosting start-ups used Linux since "Unix" tended to be expensive and Windows was pretty useless. That left a flavor of BSD or Linux. As I said just my list but I may be willing to give that one to you.

Re:GNU/Linux Foundation?

[Ekarderif]

Last I checked, TCP/IP stack was created for the US government under Berkeley's BSD Unix. So technically, BSD is a far better foundation than Linux for the internet.

Re:GNU/Linux Foundation?

[Jack9]

BSD, yes, that sounds about right to me.

By the time I was a full time PHP developer (PHP/FI 2.0 had just moved to PHP3) I was tinkering with RedHat 4.2 in June of 1997 (which had a barely useable GUI)...RedHat 1.0 had come out in 1994. To put it in better perspective, Yahoo was a well known brand by 1995 (to those who had a web browser, not AOL users). For all of the problems with Linux at the time, BSD was always touted as the "solid" Free OS along with Solaris the "solid" corporate OS. That's just my perspective.

Re:GNU/Linux Foundation?

[LWATCDR]

There was Linux before Readhat. SLS, Slackware, and Debian all started around 1993. I would love to learn BSD but I havn't had the time and frankly Linux works well enough for what I need it for. Someday I will have to try out OpenBSD.

Linux huh?

[juergen]

By many Linux (the kernel) is seen as *the* prototypical OS project, yet it is missing here.

Oth, I didn't even recognize dyne:bolic without reading the description. And including Outfoxed, while they even admit it is not an OS project per se, shows they were just scrambling to find any 10 points to fill the list and space on their site. Clueless.

Mod parent up!

[donscarletti]

Isn't it a contradiction to have a redundant first post? Slashcode is actually a pretty nice forum system and slashdot itself has brought hours of fun to tech fans, zealots, karma whores and trolls alike for many years now. If I wasn't so afraid of being labeled as a brownnose, I'd say that slashdot was one of the key parts of an open source system that holds the rest together.

Re:Mod parent up!

[genner]

You are here by labled a brown nose.

Dyne:bolic

[mwvdlee]

They included "Dyne:bolic", perhaps the only Linux-on-CD I've never heard of before.

Re:Dyne:bolic

[joeljkp]

dyne:bolic is interesting because it's one of the few completely Free OSs, without a bit of proprietary code in sight. Its default desktop is WindowMaker, too.

Re:Dyne:bolic

[chronicon]

dyne:bolic is interesting because it's one of the few completely Free OSs, without a bit of proprietary code in sight. Its default desktop is WindowMaker, too.

Too bad I've never gotten it to work properly on any of the HW I have tried it on. It boasts of being a sort of minimalists media distro capable of running on almost anything but it doesn't. I haven't been able to utilize it to any meaningful extent on hardware old or new. Really too bad. I would love it if it had lived up to it's claims...

How it or anything else made it on their 'top ten' list is a mystery...

Re:Dyne:bolic

[flyneye]

what odd hardware you must have.Perhaps not.
Plenty of help on the site.I've met one computer out of probably 20 or more I've loaded it up on,that wouldnt work and that was just X on an old onboard video chip.
Plenty of help onsite or if you just cant RTFM,the mailing list is helpful and filled with friendly,intelligent people.
For me,personally,being able to run a quick cluster with loads of the best multimedia software is a rush.
Really blows peoples minds when i boot their whole network with it and show it off.Especially when they got a low end computer on at least one node.
ok,call this a whorevertisement for my cluster fetish.hope you get over your issues soon.

Re:Dyne:bolic

[chronicon]

Thanks... I guess. I'm not a n00b. I've been on Linux since RH 5.2. My HW isn't very exotic. I guess I might try the latest dyne::bolic and see what happens but I'm not expecting much...

Why is Gimp on the list?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really understand why the amateurish image touching utility Gimp is on the list. It still lacks robust color profiles management, effective dynamic layers, pdf importing and so on.. The developers have spent the last 5 years polishing on the old and a lot of the modern productivity lifting and necessary tools are simply missing.

Although you can use it for some small work and some extremely good users can do parts of professional work with it, it's not even close to the commercial "competitors" it has. It can be very cumbersome and unproductive tool in overall if you compare to Photoshop or even Paintshop Pro. Or soon that KDE drawing application that is worked on..

WWWWoooooWWWWW

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm you are lucky enought that you can't waste all your karma with 1 post.

Next time think that there is a lot of Slashdot users that read it every 10 minuts, but in the end it's a love/hate relation.

oblig. missing option

[MadFarmAnimalz]

How could they leave hotbabe out?

I like MediaFrame

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool technology that lowers the barrier to entry for streaming. It's mainly used for porn sites at the moment though!

Inkscape and Jakarta

[Mr. Ghost]

I don't know if it is one of the 10 best for everyone, but it is definitely one of my 10 best. I have used it to create some nice graphics for use in a board game I am working on.

I'm not sure if this will count (depends on definition of open source) but I would also nominate as my #1 overall:

JAKARTA

My Favorite Free Software

[Goo.cc]

Currently on my Mac: Bash, Camino, Cog, Handbrake, ImageMagick, InfoZip, Lame, PostgreSQL, Rsync, Vim, XinePlayer.

GCC

[Anonymous Coward]

GCC should be on this list. After all, without GCC, the vast majority of the others would not be possible.

Re:GCC

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. But why stop there? Without the numbers 0 and 1 OSS would not be possible. In fact, let's go even farther. Without atoms......

Strictly software...

[Noryungi]

Watch out, since this is heavily sysadmin biased...

1. Slackware Linux. Still the best after all this time.
2. OpenBSD. Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out there trying to get you.
3. OpenSSH. Because you just can't use plain text telnet anymore.
4. Rsync. Just because.
5. GNU Screen. Triple your terminal productivity. Now with minty-fresh taste!
6. GNU Wget. Because you have better thing to do than watch over a download.
7. Vim.Because Emacs is for losers.
8. Nmap. Look at 'OpenBSD' above.
9. IPTables. Lock that machine down, admin boy.
10. pf. I said, lock that machine down , admin boy!

Of course, number 11 is Google, Google, and Google. But that's neither software nor open-source.

Re:Strictly software...

[Lord Byron II]

Why don't you make your list go to 10 and make that the highest?

Re:Strictly software...

[Lord Ender]

I think you should take OpenSSH off of your list until it supports X.509 certificates, like the rest of the Internet (including other SSH packages) already does. It's 2006--about time for OpenSSH to catch up with 1993.

Re:Strictly software...

[LordEvan]

I'm with you on that list, but howzabout...

12. Samba. 'Cause worms can have the workstations, but you're not getting my server! :)

The GNU project...

[Anonymous Coward]

...more specifically the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC).

As for me

[ceeam]

Never heard about these: pbb, Outfoxed, dyne:bolic. Also - I think it is not fair to include websites to the list: yes, I can add/change content on both Wikipedia and to a lesser degree other sites, but I wouldn't call content "source". As for the source - it is as easy for me to change Wikipedia's engine as any other site (i.e. - not very likely). More - Mediawiki has a separate entry.

Tomcat

[Decaff]

I'd have to include Apache Tomcat - the open source Java application server that is the reference standard for JSP and Servlet implementations, but is of such high quality that it can be used for high-performance websites, and commercial app servers often bundle it as part of their product.

Re:Tomcat

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Tomcat Rulez! I recommend it to all my customers.
http://www.servicerules.com.ar/

my favourite

[edson at lies.cl]

i know not everyone uses it, but it is an amazing app

PHPMyAdmin

PostgreSQL

[LLuthor]

It is the single best open source project around.

Add One

[bennyp]

• Ardour. Excellent Free Digital Audio Workstation.

Ardour certainly has put a little more bounce in my breakfast.

Re:Add One

[Anonymous Coward]

Big ditto. Also note that the Ardour author and his team are also the designers of the awesome JACK audio connection system. Further note: Ardour and JACK are OSX-savvy...

Dave Phillips
http://linux-sound.org/

industry, economic, and cultural impact list:

[CFD339]

Not necessarily in order, these are some top picks based on how they've changed or are changing our entire technology culture:

Linux. Duh. How much of everything else is built on this fantastic platform for the back end? I'm not personally in support of rolling out desktops to users, but as a server platform its amazing and flexible. More important, it empowers developers to build EVERYTHING.

Asterisk. If you use an IP phone service, you already have a small hint at how this changes things. If you've developed software that uses SIP or IAX2 to connect things and move streaming traffic you're starting to get the hint. IMO, this is a paradigm shifting technology just at the start of a giant curve up in its attention by the industry.

Sourceforce. For obvious reasons, this has empowered so many projects.

Apache, and the things its led to -- like Tomcat, etc.

Eclipse -- Wow, an open sourced (even if originally sponsored, driven, and to some extent built by IBM) rich user context framework and complete IDE for development that's absolutely a rival to Visual Studio.

I know I'm forgetting a ton -- but these in particular are real industry driving tools that changed or are about to change (in the case of Asterisk) large segments of the tech world.

Top "ten"?

[slavemowgli]

here's the top ten - Wikipedia, Firefox, Open Office, Bittorrent, MediaWiki, Xvid, pbb, Outfoxed, dyne:bolic, GIMP, Apache and SourceForge.

Err, that's twelve.

Re:Top "ten"?

[jag7720]

Yeah, Wiki twice... please and Outfoxed... which is a political statement rather than a boost for OSS

Hmm

[omeg]

I don't agree with some of them. XviD? Yeah, it's okay, but vastly inferior to x264. phpBB? Yeah, not bad software, but not as good as SMF.

outfoxed?

[schmu_20mol]

has hell frozen over?! ... I can't seem to find _anything_ that is open source about outfoxed.com ...

Does someone care to clear that up for me?

Re:outfoxed?

[Z0mb1eman]

I'm assuming the article is talking about http://getoutfoxed.com/

Asterisk

[lophophore]

Asterisk. It's the next big thing. Maddog thinks so. And I think he's right.

Re:Asterisk

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is it the next big thing, it's the current big thing.

Blind spot?

[ralphclark]

What about Linux and the GNU command line tools? Sine qua non. Maybe these were considered too obvious but I dont see why that should disqualify them.

BSD, PHP, Blender

[Qbertino]

BSD:
ALL operating systems use core components of this one.
Windows, Linux, OS X and the rest that's worth mentioning.
That is - of course - due to it's quality combined with the BSD licence.
Everybody feeds of BSD, nobody admits it.

PHP:
Not the ultimate PL. I know that. But I think it's safe to say that no other PL is in such wide use across the demografic of people who know the internet. It's the web generations basic. It's the Citizen Band way of doing things with networked computers nowadays. It started as a laughing stock for 'professionals' - it often still is today - but crap-free and proper documentation, an embracing of concepts that are the absolute opposite of arcane and a solid community with zero smart-ass-hole attitude and elitisim have put PHP in a position where every other PL community envys it's recognition.

Blender:
One of the rare cases where OSS currently is making inroads in an extremly competetive hermetric application market (3D) giving a clear view of the postitive side effects of successfull OSS: falling prices and increased quality and effort. Given, Blender was a commercial tool itself not long ago and it still doesn't cover today's every 'professsional' feature, but the breathtaking pace of improvement of Blender and the commitment of it's community are exceptional none the less.

Eh, the GNU project and the Linux project?

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

Eh, the GNU project and the Linux project?

Linux kernel?

[just_another_sean]

Hands down my favorite Open Source project!

try wdiff

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

I'm glad to learn I'm not the only one that thinks wget is fantastic.

One util that I'll add that you might like is http://www.gnu.org/software/wdiff/wdiff.html">GNU wdiff - a diff that's word-based instead of line-based. Great.

Oh, and don't worry about insulting Emacs. It'll still be there when you grow out of vim ;-p

Re:try wdiff

[Noryungi]

wdiff? Ah! Real men do it The Way God Intended Diff To Be Done: with vim, of course.

[g]vim -d file1 file2

Vim is good. Vim is great. Fear the Vim. Try it sometimes, it's probably good enough to make you switch from Emacs... ;-)

[Gosh, I love the smell of napalm... Early in the morning... in the Slashdot discussions...] :-)

Scrabble

[kevin_conaway]

Obviously my favorite is my own creation! Multiplayer, online scrabble, written in Python.

Re:Scrabble

[Anonymous Coward]

My current favorite open source project is an open source MOLAP Server called Palo (it's OLAP spelt backwards) - available it trial form from www.opensourceolap.org

KDE!

[alucinor]

Its developer community is absolutely thriving right now! Everyone's so syked about 4.0!

Filezilla

[16K Ram Pack]

Filezilla is one of the best applications I've used because it's a great, free FTP client.

Re:Filezilla

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Filezilla is one of the best applications I've used because
>> it's a great, free FTP client.

Agreed. I only recently discovered FileZilla, and it blows my previous FTP tool away (WS_FTP), not only because it rocks functionality-wise, but mainly because it is FREE (as in FREEDOM).

Now, if they'd only port it to *nix, I'd be oh-so-ecstatic. In the meantime, I'll just keep on keepin' on with command line, because it never fails me.

Other FLOSS software...

[Ekarderif]

Ogg framework? This is far more significant than XviD. Linux? The one program that started the FLOSS revolution didn't even make it on the list. (No, GNU didn't start it.) GCC? Hell, any part of GNU? BSD? Specifically, OpenSSH? Or the contributions to TCP/IP stack... XWS? The P programming languages?

OT: pbb

[nolife]

Changing the subject but I followed your link to the Polybrominated biphenyls. I find this sentence as very odd:

In 1973, however, several thousand pounds of PBBs were accidentally mixed with livestock feed that was distributed to farms in West Central Michigan, USA.

I found more about it here, what an odd chain of events. I'm sure those with tin foil hats would have a different opinion of what really happened.

SpamBayes

[yAm]

especially the plugin for outlook. Saves me much hassle throughout the week.

Whaa?

[Tibor the Hun]

Are you for real?
whom I think where still humans
You think!!? What the fuck else could they have been? Monkeys? lizzards? Angels?

And on top of that, you bash *niX OSs.

Classic makings of a troll. Very nicely done. Pay attention newbie moderators.

Re:Whaa?

[amliebsch]

What the fuck else could they have been? Monkeys? lizzards? Angels?

Vulcans.

The actual list

[Per Abrahamsen]

The actual list is a mixture of free software projects, and user editable web sites. At least reading the description, it often seems to refer to the software, not the web-site. Despite what the blurp in the article claims.

Both Wikipedia and MediaWiki is on the list.

Project AJAX

[mevryck]

Divulge all the strengths of imaginations that would be the case when it comes to this AJAX - try to design and device a common platform for implementing the AJAX framework since there are many and having their limitations(toolkits). This would be the best Open Source Project.

Top...

[emptycorp]

Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP because they changed my life.

Re:Top...

[drakaan]

My vote is for Inkscape. GIMP is great for raster stuff in the same way that Inkscape is great for vector stuff (and they have equally irritating menu systems).

Re:Top...

[AxelBoldt]

Inkscape is a piece of crap. The other day I tried to add a red arrow to some jpeg, to point out a feature. Standard use case of a vector program, I'd say. After half an hour, I gave up: it was impossible to get the arrow's tip to show up in red. Back to the stone age: drawing the arrow from two paths in gimp...

Re:Top...

[drakaan]

You're kidding, right? If that took you more than 5 minutes and there's not some esoteric "can't create arrow with red tip" bug that's been reported but onsolvable on sourceforge, then you need to find somebody who can help you or run through a tutorial.

Not to pick nits, but why would you bother using inkscape for something so trivial? If you want to create scalable vector graphics (icons, logos, etc), sure, but adding an arrow to a jpeg?

Re:Top...

[AxelBoldt]

I don't understand your comment. To the best of my knowledge, inkscape is not able to create red arrows. I spent half an hour of research in inkscape tutorials, help files and google to arrive at that conclusion. What do you suggest I should have done instead? Spend only 5 minutes of research? Use some other software, because this task is too "trivial" for inkscape? What other software do you suggest? Gimp doesn't have a feature for creating arrows either.

Inkscape is crap, face it. It can't even perform the most trivial tasks required of a vector program.

Re:Top...

[drakaan]

I guess we're even, since I don't understand what your problem was/is with creating an arrow of some particular color. A fairly trivial task insofar as creating a shape in a vector drawing program is to make a triangle and a line and group them together.

Are you saying that there's no button to "insert arrow" in Inkscape, and that was your problem with it? If you'd like, I could tke 5 minutes out of my day to create and send you an .svg of an arrow (red, blue, purple, rainbow gradient, whetever) for future use in your choice of vector image editing apps.

I just don't get what it is that's leading you to the conclusion that inkscape is crap.

Re:Top...

[AxelBoldt]

Well, I know that you can assemble an arrow from its pieces, and that's what I ended up doing, but I assumed that a drawing program in the 21st century should be able to draw an arrow for me. The "correct" way of drawing arrows in inkscape is to first draw a path, then Object|Fill and Stroke|Stroke style|End Markers and choose the arrow head. That took me about 10 minutes to figure out, never having used inkscape before. The next twenty minutes I spent trying to get the arrow head to show up in red. I still believe it's impossible.

Re:Top...

[drakaan]

Since I had never tried it the way you mentioned, I had to try it out...you're right. It's impossible to do it that way, which is pretty stupid.

To be fair, there are zero items in the project feature requests or bug reports about this, so it's not likely that the devs know that it's broken. I have (hopefully) brought it to someone's attention.

I'm glad that wasn't the first thing I ever tried to do with inkscape, or I probably would never have bothered learning to use it. This guy *really* knows how to use it.

Re:Top...

[drakaan]

So, I have to correct myself. It's possible to do, but it'll change the color of all of the end-markers (which is due to the particulars of the SVG 1.1 specification).

The correct way to do it, apparently, depends on whether you want all of your arrows to be the same color. If you want different-colored arrows, you have to make the tips yourself (Just make one shape and copy it, I suppose). If they can all be the same color, you have to go into the XML and change the color of the end-marker by assigning it a "Fill:" attribute.

Neither of those is a particularly handy solution to your use case. If that's all you ever plan on using Inkscape for, then I'd have to say that for you, Inkscape probably does indeed suck.

At least you got the devs to mention the reason for the problem and say they'll try to support it in the future.

Re:Top...

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent trying to get the arrow head to show up in red. I still believe it's impossible.

Moron. I just installed inkscape, and it took me about 2 minutes to figure out how to set the color: Object -> Fill and Stroke. I've never used a vector programme before in my life.

KDE

[m50d]

It looks great, it's ridiculously customizable, and it's relatively easy to get involved in development. I think it really shows off the advantages of OSS.

I'm surprise people missed these

[DiamondGeezer]

Wordpress 2.0, Spam Karma, Bad Behavior, PhpBB all completely rock.

Re:I'm surprise people missed these

[DiamondGeezer]

because I missed some quotation marks, that should be Wordpress 2.0

Re:I'm surprise people missed these

[Anonymous Coward]

phpBB was on the list (I think it was number 11 of 10)

Freshmeat's Top Goodies Stats.

[antdude]

Click here.

phpBB is great

[smagruder]

phpBB is easily extensible and has a great mod community. phpBB is only attacked because it is incredibly popular and other discussion board upstarts want to dethrone it.

And what does it matter that it utilizes "a mix of coding styles and theories"? It just shows they use the appropriate approach where it's needed. Many good programmers recognize the value of hybrid over "pure approach" programming. And the templating system is all right with me--I've had to extend it for my own tastes, but phpBB was so well-coded, extending it was easy.

phpBB starts out bland, but it's easy to extend into something great and unique to your tastes.

Political agenda

[jag7720]

Nice... I would expect this from both sides of the political movements...but from the technology movement... OutFoxed should not be included in this line up. Sure it is an opensource project but would a similar project about CNN have gotten in the top 10... doubtful...

This choice seems to not really be about "opensource" but rather a way to get the Outfoxed onto Slashdot...cheap

In the future, leave your petty political agendas out of a "TECHNOLOGY" top ten list.

Re:Political agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

...WOW

Talk about an angenda

Google for OutFoxed. READ the results. It has NOTHING to do with the movie.

God help us if we actually begin to READ and RESEARCH for ourselves.

Re:Political agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is the raw footage is available for reuse. I don't know of any other documentaries that allow this? Please post other examples that are policitally neutral.
This concept if embraced is potentially revolutionary.
Likewise for open source music, such as root#records (http://www.rootrecords.org/open-source.html).

Re:Political agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the article in the Independent.
        The list includes outfoxed, the documentary.

Re:Political agenda

[jag7720]

Uh.... ok... #1 OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism #2 Outfoxed | Personalize your internet. #3 Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004) #4 Amazon.com: Outfoxed - Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004): DVD #5 Video : OUTFOXED: Watch it online Uh... only #2 looks like is the only one that talks about the software

Why Xvid?

[evilviper]

I can understand most of the choices, but I have to ask: why is Xvid listed? It seems so completely arbitrary. It's not the only MPEG-4 codec, it's not only open source MPEG-4 codec, and many people agree that it's not even the best of the open source MPEG-4 codecs...

If you want to list a video codec, why not http://ffmpeg.sf.net/ ? Not only do they have a great (and fast!) MPEG-4 encoder, they also have hundreds of other codecs, many reverse engineered, and incredibly optimized.

If you're doing anything with video on Unix, you can be sure you're using ffmpeg. MPlayer, VLC, Xine, Avidemux, MythTV, etc. all get most of their functionality out of ffmpeg.

Seems like the thing Xvid has going for it is good publicity...

Blender

[Anonymous Coward]

BLENDER - http://www.blender.org/
Blender is the best open source project I've ever used. If you are on a 3d artist on an open source operating system blender is one of the only programs you will ever need to use. It's that good. Not as many tools as say Maya or 3DSMax but the python scripting API allows you to easily create your own. From a workflow standpoint I find blender very fast once you get used to the interface. Rather than giving you a lot of tools to simulate traditional art equipment blender makes you think like openGL. Blender was a commercial product at one point but it has evolved significantly as an open source project.

no no no (vim)

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

I used vim for years, and I repeated silly slogans about it during that time too. Vim is a good introduction to what people should expect from an editor, but Emacs is the editor that actually does those things.

Vim lets you do lots of things, but in horrible ways. It makes you ask "I wonder if there's an easy/clean way to do this" - there's a short answer, but the long answer is: move to GNU Emacs.

Is open-source left with any meaning?

[matt me]

Open-source has NO meaning. It's just another buzzword. OS. I call BS.

Re:Is open-source left with any meaning?

[chronicon]

I read the article, I have no idea what they were attempting to do. Are they trying to enumerate the best projects developed under open-source style licensing or user modifiable websites? The title & abstract have almost nothing to do with the content of the article at all:

Open source websites: All change on the internet

Ana Kronschnabl and Tomas Rawlings pick the best open source websites where users can change the content

What is that supposed to mean in light of their picks for winners? It makes no sense at all. Disregarding that, what criteria did they use to decide what was 'best'? Why is this a /. headline? Unreal...

Re:Is open-source left with any meaning?

[h4lphl33tor]

I wish there was a way to mod TFA itself so we wouldn't have to read all the way down to here before realizing this whole FA thread is just a waste of time.

can't count?

[AaronCampbell]

"It was hard getting the list down to ten, but we did; here's the top ten - (1)Wikipedia, (2)Firefox, (3)Open Office, (4)Bittorrent, (5)MediaWiki, (6)Xvid, (7)pbb, (8)Outfoxed, (9)dyne:bolic, (10)GIMP, (11)Apache and (12)SourceForge." Must be new math...6+6=10 now

Re:can't count?

[jag7720]

"It was hard getting the list down to ten, but we did; here's the top ten - (1)Wikipedia, (2)Firefox, (3)Open Office, (4)Bittorrent, (5)MediaWiki, (6)Xvid, (7)pbb, (8)Outfoxed, (9)dyne:bolic, (10)GIMP, (11)Apache and (12)SourceForge." Must be new math...6+6=10 now

(1)Wikipedia =.5 (5)MediaWiki = .5 (8)Outfoxed = Political statement (0) So .5+1+1+1+.5+1+1+0+1+1+1+1=10

Re:can't count?

[NumberOneFan]

6 + 6 != ten, that's for sure. But you can easily make the case for 6+6=10 in base 12.

Blender3D

[wayward]

In the graphics department, Blender3D is pretty impressive.

re: "let's change some of the texts"

[Anonymous Coward]

how many, do you think, would notice?

how many fundimentalists, do you think, would realize that a change had been made?

how many martyrs, do you think, would there be, for St. Gulak?

Hail Eris!!!!!

And here I thought it was something new

[VxJasonxV]

And here I thought that pbb was something new and unique that I had never even heard of.
'lo and behold it's something that I've known about and used for the better of the past few years. :-(

LDS church? Bible EULA

[Sigg3.net]

"Being a member of the LDS church.."
LDS? Hey, I'm LSD! Nice to meet you!

On a side note, the last paragraphs of the Holy Bible - just before the addendums - clearly say anyone messin' with it will be swallowed by hellfire, have his semen rot and his daughters prostituted (is that a word?) and stuff like that.
That's one helluva EULA. The question you must ask yourself is this; are you game?

Re:LDS church? Bible EULA

[Anonymous Coward]

On a side note, the last paragraphs of the Holy Bible - just before the addendums - clearly say anyone messin' with it will be swallowed by hellfire, have his semen rot and his daughters prostituted (is that a word?) and stuff like that.
That's one helluva EULA. The question you must ask yourself is this; are you game?

DEUTERONOMY 12:32 says the same thing (no adding to or taking away) only much earlier in Biblical history. So where does that leave the rest of the Bible? Besides, the book (Revelation) with the hefty EULA you mention isn't placed in chronological order. It was written prior to some of the other books in the New Testament, so where does that leave you? Could it perhaps be a warning NOT to mess with what's already been written (adding to it or deleting passages) WITHOUT precluding that more might be written later if the Almighty so desired?

Adium Rocks!

[moo083]

Adium is easily my favorite chat program. It uses libgaim to function (for Mac) and has the best chat program UI I've seen. It is constantly updated and has plans for all sorts of new features. We are truly lucky to have the Adium X teams working on this project.

Jive Software

[elasticwings]

Lately, I've been a huge fan of what they are doing at Jive Software. I forcefully tasked myself with replacing our lackluster Jabberd2 server with something better and found this to be a much better solution. Their product does wonderfully with LDAP authentication and their IM client is simple to install/use. Of course, the server side portion is open source. It's a wonderful free solution that works with many different clients like GAIM, PSI, Trillion, and probably alot more.

My fav. OS project..

[aztracker1]

Synchronet BBS Software Old-School man, that's what it's all about...

Re:can't count? 6+6=10?

[Sigg3.net]

Must be new math...6+6=10 now
They are operating with very low values of 6. This is typical Open Source, and it means that they're intelligent.

I cant believe its not been mentioned

[Anonymous Coward]

Samba?

Good choices all around . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say that the choices listed are necessarily bad, but I'd take ffmpeg over Xvid and what's Apache without a good OS to run it on? I don't see any Linux distribution (or the kernel for that matter), nor any mention of FreeBSD

VLC should be one of them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Video application is an important category. VLC is by far the best video application on all OSes, ever...

gcc

[medoc]

There would be no open-source projects without gcc.

Software worth paying for

[Noksagt]

I've put my money where my mouth is and have donated to my favorite open source projects. I encourage everyone else to do something similar (as incentive for many in the U.S. at this time of the year: some projects are run non-profit, so your donations may be tax deductible.

SourceForge?

[patcito]

Sorry guys but SourceForge is not an open source project. It's been proprietary for years now. It's development was picked up at https://gna.org/projects/savane .

DotNetNuke

[tetranz]

DotNetNuke Growing very quickly, high quality, well managed and well documented.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Not as obvious as GNU/Linux...

[CaptSnuffy]

Perl, perhaps?

Subversion

[Bassman59]

I cast my vote for subversion. You need good source-code control for programming and hardware (FPGA, even PCBs!).

SourceForge - closed source open source web site

[dchamp]

Isn't it funny that Sourceforge.net is the most popular repository and project tracker for OSS projects, yet it's run on closed-source software?

Of course, there's always gforge.org if you want something similar, that's actually Open Source.

Here is what I use

[Wikipedia]

Here are the open source programs I use:
Paint.NET:
http://www.eecs.wsu.edu.nyud.net:8090/paint.net/
VideoLAN:
http://www.videolan.org/
Abiword:
http://www.abisource.com/
Azureus:
http://azureus.sf.net/
DOSBox, a x86 emulator with DOS (for my old games)
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/
HydraIRC, an irc client written in C#:
http://www.hydrairc.com/
KCeasy, a multi-network filesharing program (uses gift, openft)
http://www.kceasy.com/
LJ.NET, a livejournal client written in C#
http://lj-net.sf.net/
musikCube
http://musikcube.com/
tor, anonymous/secure proxy (at least until it hits the exit nodes)
http://tor.eff.org/
Virtualdub:
http://virtualdub.org/
ClamWin Antivirus, written in C++ and Python:
http://clamav.net/
http://clamwin.sf.net/
zsnes:
http://zsnes.com
PDFCreator:
http://www.pdfcreator.de.vu/
Privoxy, popup, ad, and cookie blocking:
http://www.privoxy.org/
SharpReader, rss reader written in C#
http://sharpreader.net
WinLopster, lopster napster client
http://winlop.sf.net/
Audacity
http://audacity.sf.net/
Mozilla, GAIM, Thunderbird.
More open-source software written in C#:
http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php? form_cat=271
Now when will someone write a web browser in C#-.NET?

ERP - Open for Business and Compiere

[almax]

Open source tools are great, but businesses need application software. I don't have figures, but I would think that ERP software dwarfs infrastructure software in importance, if not dollar value. Especially with businesses moving to more web-based software, it doesn't matter whether you run it on Windows or Linux, but that software is a cornerstone of most businesses. That is why open source efforts to address this sector are so important. In my opinion, even though Compiere (http://compiere.org/) may have more downloads than Open for Business (http://www.ofbiz.org/), OFBiz should be considered the leader because its architecture is structured for SOA and the web, it is database agnostic and is easier to get up and running.

Boost C++ Libraries

[FelipeAlmeida]

1. Boost ( www.boost.org ) Because you cant write C++ these days without such a high-quality library.

Creative Commons License?

[WestervilleSlim]

What about the creative commons license? Copyleft? I think this was a major advance that allowed us all to pursue open source in the way we wanted to.

MSYS+MINGW+Vim+FF+NB+T'drive= COSC Delight

[Bushido Hacks]

If there is anything that the on the go Computer Scientist, geek, or hacker should have it is a 1GB thumbdrive loaded with MSYS, MinGW (GCC for Windows), Vim, Firefox 1.5 with plugins, and Netbeans 5.0beta. These programs can all be configured to run from a Thumbdrive. I don't like using Cygwin because it is anchored to the computer. MSYS is more flexable. A few batch scripts, moving files to the proper locations, and making sure that there is nothing stored in the registry is all that it takes.

And yet no one noticed????

[Anonymous Coward]

It was hard getting the list down to ten, but we did; here's the top ten - Wikipedia, Firefox, Open Office, Bittorrent, MediaWiki, Xvid, pbb, Outfoxed, dyne:bolic, GIMP, Apache and SourceForge."

Um... that would be 12, not 10.

I guess it was REALLY hard getting the list down to ten.

read the friendly artilce

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmmm - Linux is on there - see dyne:bolic
And this got modded to a 5. Dear /. please can the moderators read the 'king articles

My top 10

[jonwil]

In no particular order, here are my top 10 open source projects:
1.The Apache web server (STILL the most popular web server in the world today and consistantly more secure than Microsoft IIS)
2.The Mozilla/Firefox web browser and the Gecko rendering engine (The growing popularity of Gecko based browsers has forced even microsoft to take notice)
3.The OpenOffice office suite (IMO the biggest threat to the total dominance of Microsoft Office since WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3)
4.The Linux kernel (Without this, we would still be waiting for HURD)
5.ReactOS (once its mature enough, people for whom their only microsoft product is Windows can become microsoft free)
6.The GNU Compiler Collection (For many platforms, this is the only compiler and for many others, it is the only free compiler sitting alongside a for-pay manufacturer provided compiler)
7.GIMP (Some people DO need all the power and features of Photoshop but for everyone else, GIMP is a great alternative)
8.PHP (together with MySQL, it has provided most of the features of propriatory technologies like ASP and JSP without the huge price tag)
9.OGG Vorbis/OGG Theora (with the Vorbis codec providing a truely FREE audio codec and the Theora video codec promising to do the same for video, the Xiph foundation is reaching the goal of providing a patent free way to implement audio and video into software products)
and 10.SourceForge (SourceForge is the worlds largest collection of open source software and provides a place for developers to host open source software of any size with site features like multiple download mirrors and fully functional CVS server that would cost big $$$ just about anywhere else)

Re:My top 10

[typical]

The Apache web server (STILL the most popular web server in the world today and consistantly more secure than Microsoft IIS)

"Still"? It's been steadily increasing its lead over IIS for years.

Autohotkey

[NoMoreBS]

Autohotkey is my favourite piece of software, Open Source or otherwise, and the biggest reason I am still using Windows instead of Linux. You can use it to avoid repetitious work (and repetitious, uncomfortable mouse movements), make common tasks a lot faster, and get around the fact that a lot of programs don't have built-in keyboard commands or macros.

MAME

[Anonymous Coward]

I vote for MAME.

They're not holding out on you.

[Anonymous Coward]

> But they *do* contain large quantities of Old Testament writings that don't particularly jive with existing translations in many places.

There are tons of old texts not considered cannon. This sort of confusion is exactly why the Council of Treant set forth a cannon. Of course, then Martin Luther came along and removed what Protestants call the Apocrypha and what Catholics consider Deuterocannonical works. You won't find these in most modern translations of the Bible any more. You can easily read them online if you want to see what they contain and why Protestants disagree with them and why Catholics believe them--the root problem is that they support certain things which Protestants do not and also that they may not have originally been written in Hebrew, but rather came to us in Greek, via the Septuagint... assuming I can spell it correctly.

That said, as far as those writings which were cannonical are concerned, any texts from them ARE taken into account in the Bible. You will find them in the footnotes of any good Bible, usually saying things like "some variants say x" or somesuch. As far as the cannonical books go, there really isn't any confusion over New Testament books--barring a few outright frauds like "Secret Mark," the text is well settled. The Old Testament is considerably murkier, but I'm unaware of any great additions or removals of any text, save that Christians divide it into books differently than the Jews do and such.

As for the non-cannonical works, the most I can say is that they've never been part of the Bible as we know it, any more than other writings of the early church are. So no, they're not magically excluded because they were kept by the Essenes. Besides, John the Baptist is thought by some to have been an Essene.

If you want a more detailed answer, read up on "Textual Criticism"--they go over the details of each dispute or difference one letter at a time. Sadly, I'm not kidding... they make for some pretty dry reading unless you're really interested in this sort of thing :)

Branches and revisions

[IdahoEv]

In the case of the Bible, the license ... prohibits one from changing the source to help prevent bugs from creeping in. A lot folks have ignored this restriction, resulting in much chaos, but that's another story.

Indeed, at this point the project's archive contains more branches than a burning bush!

Why 10? From what view?

[Sithgunner]

Without a real specific category, how do you narrow to 10?
It's just ripping and scraping 10 out of the great 100 open source for your liking.
This list is nothing...
Where is BIND? Where is sendmail/postfix? No internet is there without these anyway...
I mean, not everyone benefits from XviD nor from GIMP, but moreso for BIND and other critical part of people's life.

He doesn't put Linux anyway... so... don't bother, unless you came to find what dyne:bolic is...

www.groklaw.net for Top 10!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hay, Groklaw.net is a fantastic top 10 open system - of software, people, and goals. Go PJ!

Sourceforge is not an open source project

[asv108]

Its funny that they should mention SourceForge, while it is a great site, VA software decided to stop releasing the source code to sourceforge a few years ago.

I was a mormon then quit

[Anonymous Coward]

I just realized it's an activity in following authority and a practice in blissful delusion.

eyeOS

[eporue]

What about eyeOS ? It is still in beta, but it might be a revolution: http://eyeOS.org