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

Ummmmmmm.....?

[diamondmagic]

Linux?

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.

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.

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.

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?

[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.

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.

GCC

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.