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How To Tell Open-Source Winners From Losers
An anonymous reader writes "There are 139,834 open-source projects under way on SourceForge. IWeek wonders which projects will make lasting contributions, and which will fizzle. Sure, Linux, Apache, and MySQL are winners, but what about OpenVista, FLOSSmole, and Hyperic HQ? What's your list of open-source winners and losers?"
I've always thought there should be a borg-like game project to roll all the unfinished games into one big ball and work out the common elements into a single game engine, then just farm out the artwork,etc. back to the individual project holders. It could be way easier to generate a lot of interesting games that way.
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In the Java world, anything released by the Apache Jakarta project is usally a winner.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
It's the same as with everything: you can't tell which products are going to win by looking at the projects. Look at the hype, instead. If the media are abuzz with the product, it's probably a winner. If a product can't seem to capture the media attention, even after reaching a usable state, it will not be more than a fringe player. If the project site, documentation, code, etc. is so messy you can't make sense of it, the product will probably fail.
Disclaimer: this is just my rule of thumb. There's no silver bullet. If I _really_ knew how to predict these things, I'd be a millionaire (and not in Romanian Lei).
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Ok, I confess. I'm one of the guys thats trashing sf.net.
However, when I realized I would not have time to "finish" my small project (I had a working version up there though) I decided to remove the homepage, *and* the
Now, callar me stupid but I did not manage. I looked over and over for a way to delete *my own* project but didn't manage. I looked a couple of days later and I then send an email to sf.net and explained the situation to them. What did I get in response? Nada, zip.
This was maybe 18 months or so ago and maybe it's better now but my long-ago-abandoned program still sits at sf.net taking up space.
Aside from the obvious big winners (ie. Firefox/Apache/MySQL/PHP/FreeBSD/Linux) here are some of the lesser-known winners that I like:
Cyberduck - Very clean OSX FTP client
Joomla! - Content Management System
SmoothWall - Router/Firewall Linux distro
VNC - remote desktop
PDFCreator - Great PDF printer for Windows, but really hard to find
VLC - all in one media player for OSX
XMMS - WinAMP-like media player for X11 systems
MythTV - even though it doesn't work for me (yet!)
Some that I think are losers:
Mambo - The project Joomla! forked from when the devs split with the corporation owning the copyright.
OpenDarwin - since Apple seems to be intent on not giving back whatever it doesn't have to.
Blender - just not enough market for another 3D app, which is why the commercial company sold it off to begin with. The nonstandard interface and workflow gets in the way and only enthusiasts really use it (like gimp, but with a much much smaller install base)
Sunbird - the calendar component of Mozilla's offerings... Firefox development has been blasting along, even Thunderbird is doing great, but Sunbird (both the standalone and plugin version) seem to have stagnated... very very unfortunate since the iCal standard is going to explode with the iCal server in OSX Server 10.5 and there are very few Windows clients that utilize it. Mozilla could capture a huge market share here.
PalmOS - once a closed-source winner... soon to be an open-source loser as the Linux-based OS supposedly in development is not adopted. Palm could dominate the market again if they pulled their heads out of their asses (not very likely).
Some of my winners may ultimately be losers. For example, SmoothWall hasn't had a major update in several years, PDFCreator is difficult to find, and would disappear if Adobe included a PDF printer with Acrobat Reader or Microsoft included one in Windows. Likewise, some of my losers could easily become winners if they could pull their acts together.
You can see my bias (as a web developer) but "loser" open source projects seem to just fade away. So I don't think there are many memorable examples as there are of winners. And of course every winner can easily be eclipsed and made a loser if they don't stay on the ball just like closed-source projects.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Several comments.
OOSS applications are not always more secure than closed source programs. I think a lot of this depends on the type of application as well as the popularity of the application. An OSS program that isn't very popular will have few developers working on it. The greater security availabel in Linux is only present because of the number of people reviewing the source; with a small program maybe there's only a few people developing it. One thing is nice however.. a lot of the less popular applications have less features than their closed source counterparts and thus have less attack vectors.
What if the project stops: What if the project just stops. Who will keep the product alive. Trusting a Company Critical Application so a program that may day doesn't sound good to me.
This is a toss up. With closed source, the reverse is true also. What if the company stops producing, developing or supporting your Company Critical Application(R)? You have no options except to migrate to another solution. You could ask the copyright holder if you can have the source, but most companies will decline citing (insert one: IP concern, security, diluted financial value of the product, etc). If a company has the technical resources and had been relying on an OSS solution, at least they have the source code as a clutch to get them through until a migration is convenient. If it turns out that the program is easily extensible, they may even keep an internal fork that they can continue to develop without the hassle of keeping their changes open sourced.
For a small business, this is an absolute non-option. They don't have the resources and losing a primary application on which your business is founded can be a business killer. OSS has it's advantages for small business however, including reduced cost over time. Like anything, OSS isn't right for everyone. Any successful business owner would complete a risk-tolerance assesment to determine what solution has acceptable features, security risk, cost(initial and over time).
Sadly, many times the instability and uncertainty of OSS applications' future makes small businesses choose closed source. It's funny though that for the very reason they choose closed source applications, they should choose open source: You never know when Company X will discontinue Product Y and leave you stranded. I would bet often times this is based on inaccurate and incomplete information. How do you tell the small businesses though that they don't need to pay the Redmond rent to be successful?
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
That's a very good point and spot-on. A classic example is "gimp"... how seriously are companies going to take a product that shares its name with the very politically incorrect slang word for a cripple?
Although it holds true for closed-source projects as well... Shake and Combustion (owned by Apple and Autodesk respectively) are names you wouldn't associate with compositing package unless you already know about them. Basic names such as "AntiVirus" usually only work as branded with their corporate entity and then only for well-known types of tools (office products, utilities, email clients, etc.)
That and open source projects usually don't have the budget, time, or knowledge to research branding and identity.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
There is a tendency for a lot of OSS projects to linger on without ever improving. They're sort of like the neurotic family dog that is reasonably well behaved in some ways, but never quite got to be 100% reliable about not pooping on the carpet.
In hopes of alienating as many people as possible, I'll list a bunch of projects that I see as being in this category:
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