Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What's the Biggest Open Source Project of 2015?
An anonymous reader writes: Several major tech and open source sites—including Opensource.com and Infoworld—have published lists of the top open source projects of the year. What's your pick for the biggest, best, or most important open source project of 2015? Are there any projects that made big leaps this year that aren't getting the recognition they deserve?
Surely
Firefox v57 Metro. They switched over to Web Kit and look just like Chrome, except for TILES!
It is just getting started. But if it lives up to its hype it could be interesting.
Probably some JS-based web framework thing that runs on Docker in your Cloud based heap of VMs that does a mashup of any number of 3rd-party Cloud-based RESTful API's that are filled to the brim with cloud and startup goodness and covered in sticky goodness that attracts vulture capitalists like flies on fresh sh1t
Retroarch.
How about some 'open source' projects that will stop humans from self-destructing and taking the entire planet down with them?
KDE
I would have won faster if you had "Webscaled", "sharded", and "runs in the Internet of Things!" but hey..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Oh, I thought it said "open backdoor", never mind.
Systemd is a project that needs more attention. We never get to hear about it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Bitcoin.
systemd! systemd! systemd!
systemd
Of course
This is clearly an attempt to give DICE more buzzwords to fill their auto-complete forms with when punching in your resume & job application for the 1000th time.
Then they'll give weight to which ever has:
- the snappiest name
- the most metrosexual-looking guys working on it
- the one with the most forced gender-equality, regardless of how it impacts the project due to real factors such as raw skill.
The Linux Kernel, Android, and Webkit are my top picks.
LLVM is also hugely important.
They are so big they can afford a gigantic full page nag on every single page.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Apple Swift 2.0 is my best guess.
It's SystemD
That way it looks like an ASCII penis
Swift! Apple just released their new programming language as OpenSource and it is the future for all development for Apple's platforms. The scope for Swift is enormous: use it for everything from operating systems to scripting. Swift builds upon their already open development technologies: llvm, clang and lldb and Swift will fit in nicely here.
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
I mean, we all use it in one way or the other. It's everywhere and it's gotten a lot of attention the last year or two due to security concerns.
In terms of benefit to the community, Shorewall ranks pretty high.
git pull and then du -sh.
The biggest project should be pretty objectively obvious.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
(fight on!)
I would consider opensource.com's list, but Infoworld is hardly the place where I'd go searching for relevant top 10 open-source lists. That site is a gigantic listicle filled with aggressive popup ads, created by an editor with a daily article norm and hardly any programming experience.
> LLVM is also hugely important.
Thank you! I depend on it every day.
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
Speaking of size, GCC easily surpasses LLVM.
Yo yo hipsters!
Node.js and Ruby on rails are sooo old right up there with gradients, colors, and other dated non flat modern things from ancient 2010. Time to be hip and write impress your cat with the new hotest opensouce language ever!
http://saveie6.com/
Virtualbox is maybe not the most original, or groundbreaking project, but it is pretty damn great, and it is a HUGE enabler.
I literally couldn't do my job without it.
n/t
My authority DNS server which I will release next week.
I'd put my vote up for HHVM. Yeah, I know, the majority of the /. community absolutely hates Facebook and PHP. But for some odd reason, when you put engineers inside of Facebook on the task of attempting to fix the longstanding issues with PHP, such as performance and having a sane language spec, they actually seem to do a pretty damn good job of improving things.
Grafana / InfluxDB
This year I've become a huge fan and user of Rehash.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Why does anyone care what is the "biggest" or "most important" open-source project ? That's like treating software in the same way as all that "Strictly Pop Idol Celebrity Chef Globes" TV garbage.
It's either *good* software, or it isn't, and that's the only criterion worth talking about.
Some of the best and most useful open-source software is also the smallest. Some of the most important and critical open-source software is also among the smallest and least 'recognised'. And some of the biggest open-source projects are also the biggest causes for concern.
Are we all hoping for prizes or something ? ... how childish.
Oh dear
If you don't pray in my school, I won't think in your church.
Qubes is picking up momentum plus Edward Snowden, The Intercept and the European Parlaiment have given it kudos recently as an enhanced security environment. It now has special integration with Whonix, which keeps Tor sessions isolated within your system, and an implementation of splitGPG to keep private keys secure. They are due to release version 3.1 soon (the 3.0 release brought some big changes and laid the groundwork for a new, distributed development process).
java_grinder allows compiled java bytecode to be run on microcontrollers and older processors: https://www.mikekohn.net/micro... Java may be used for higher-level stuff, and custom APIs/inline assembly for the rest. This is a unique and important project to watch in 2016.
it gave me THE option not to use google
Same functionality, bigger codesize? Not so good.
aaaaaaa
Migrated to Postgres back when 9.0 first came out.
0 problems since then, and it keeps getting better every year.
Keep up the great work guys (and gals).
If the question really is "biggest" then I'll be sure to win next year.
As soon as I figure out a way to generated massive amounts of random code.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
....that has to be the most important by far :)
http://openwarp.blogspot.com/
In my opinion Firefox OS is the only thing that stands between us and the enternal rule of giant Megacorps in the mobile space. It get's way to little attention and not enough support. Jolla is struggling to survive and last their OS wasn't fully FOSS and the Ubuntu Phones are not approachable as a plattform. A FOSS web-centric mobile OS is a truely feasible thing. If I had the time and resources, I'd build a kickstarter prototype for a high-end Firefox OS phone.
systemd get's the credit for raising hell amoung the FOSS crowd. Couldn't say I particulalry like or hate it, but the attention it has gotten definitely make it the most talked about project.
Blender gets far to little credit.
Atom and Electron are both neat too. ... Love that video-ad for Atom. :-) ... I like Atom for the hippster vibe it brings to FOSS with UIs and usability that don't look or feel dated. ... It does still have some issues though. :-) And, btw., unlike .Net Atom did start off as a true FOSS project done by GitHub. These folks put their money where their mouth is - unlike some other folks in the industry.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I would say the GPL itself. It is the only thing that has allowed the software part of the computer industry to at least partially transcend the iron fist of capitalism, (or whatever the iconic hand thing is supposed to be for capitalism.) Without the GPL, we probably wouldn't have internet access at home. We wouldn't have smartphones. Google wouldn't exist. GPS would probably still be military only. It will probably always be at or near the top of any sane, "biggest tech/freedom promoting work," list.
ReactOS and GNUstep are my pics, because they will change the world when they get big enough. ReactOS could disrupt the entire windows ecosystem, and GNUstep could do the same to Apple. ReactOS has just added audio and networking support (including wireless) it's not far now from being usable for day to day single user work.
Electron has made great strides in 2015 and is seeing some very active development lately. From the success of the Atom editor and Microsofts Visual Studio Code, there are many very professional tools built on this framework. In my view, it should be voted up as one of the most important projects of the last year for cross platform desktop application development.
My hope for the next couple of years is to see a fork of electron for mobile so we can start building cross platform mobile apps based on node.js and chromium.
For old school JavaScript developers like myself, the Electron project are of stuff dreams are made of.
PropForth is a free to use for any purpose implementation of FORTH for the P8X32a micro controller. FORTH is an interactive scripting language that can be useful when one just wants to do bit-banging. In embedded systems with multiple simultaneous time critical events, the Parallax Propeller P8X32A provides 8 non-interuptable CPU cores.
This combination is very fun to use, coding and testing is very quick. It provides a least-cost development environment for embedded systems development. FORTH is often used by the electrical engineer that is most interested in getting new hardware to work, rather than fighting with an overblown software IDE. It is also useful for teaching kids about programming, as it is easier than BASIC and with execution speed very similar to that of assembler. Its a very specialized tool, and very effective where appropriate.
This project actually stated several years ago, and is still in progress. Less than 1000 people have download it to date, from the google code site, so this may qualify as "not getting the recognition is deserves". Maybe this will change when the next release arrives on github.