Slashdot Mirror
The Best Unknown Open Source Projects
itwbennett writes "Carla Schroder points to an interesting trend in open source: 'The growth of large distributed projects.' OpenTox, which uses computer modeling instead of animal testing for chemical toxicity testing, and AMEE (Avoiding Mass Extinctions Engine), which uses open source software and methodologies to collect, map, measure and analyze carbon dioxide data, are two such projects. 'FOSS presents a natural platform for building large distributed projects because of the low barrier to entry — open code, open standards, and freely-available robust, high-quality high-performance software,' says Schroder."
What open source project gets less attention than you think it deserves?
Two awesome photo management apps that fit almost any workflow with a very clean, intuitive interface. Gwenview is a lighter program that's very easy to use and Digikam is a more professional one with some very advanced features.
I've always pictured the color of OS zealotry as a sort of bright flamingo pinkish hue
If there's one thing we can count on foreigners for, it's leaving out context. I am going to just go ahead and assume that the "Carla" you refer to is "Carla's Salon, Boutique and Meeting Place for the Transgender Community" and leave it at that. I am sure they thank you for your support.
Open-source ClearCase-like revision control and configuration management. Completely automatic dependency detection for any kind of build or tool, site-wide caching (for any kind of tool), O(1) checkouts/checkins, etc. Been around forever; was easily doing all of these things 10 years ago--nobody knows it exists.
www.vestasys.org
RTEMS (http://www.rtems.org) is a 20+ year old project that most people here have never heard of. But you have seen the results of projects that use it. NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory (http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/) and Dawn (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/main/index.html) missions, ESA's Herschel (http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel/index.html) and Planck (http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Planck/index.html) projects, JPL's Electra radio that circles Mars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter#Engineering_instruments). Physics labs including Stanford Linear Accelerator, Argonne, and Canadian Light Source have used RTEMS based instruments to make contributions to science. Commercial applications include engine control, building control and intercom systems, data logging, environmental monitoring, and medical devices. RTEMS is out there in the real world in lots of things which you might have used but never knew free software was there.
An open source rules engine with a focus on flexibility, small foot print, limited dependencies (no runtime dependencies), and clear descriptions of business logic. Does not implement backtracking or forward chaining, and thus very fast, very easy to use, and relatively easy to debug... ...and very unknown.
I'd say RepRap. Not that it is "unknown", but strange it is not mentioned all that often when one thinks about from that first blogpost in -05 and what have happened since. Especially these days when you can get the plasticparts (clonedel), stepper motors on ebay and a small drillpress for cheaps. Not to mention tiny "one board", easy to solder through hole solutions like Sanguinololu.
Passwordmaker generates ditto for all my internets accounts, pinpadlocks etc. Runs on whatever you throw it at, as javascript, android, crapple, N900 (Thanks George (caco3)!), as CLI. Portable to say the least, mature and of course secure to the extent of what cards you got up your sleeve.
I use Zim to organize everything these days! It's stays out of your way and doesn't complicate things. It uses textfiles as database, which is really nice as you get access to your stuff quickly through a terminal for example. Ok, sure I long for the day that it gets say a Couchdb-plugin...
Redshift safes my eyes from getting cooked. I have yet to download that maemosandbox and compile it for my N900 though. There was a new release a few days ago btw, some new fine functions and not "just" bugfixes!
"If terrorists hate us for our freedom, does that mean they're slowly starting to like us?" -- Philosoraptor.