Top 50 projects in the open source world

on May 4th, 2006 ( as of Jan 1,2008 this is 1.5 year old ) Desktop Linux Summit in San Diego Uversa CEO David Uhlman ( Customer Happiness Guru & CEO )offered a PDF list of what it considers the Top 50 projects in the open source world.

But what really is the most important project? It’s the one you’re using.

It’s a flip answer with a serious message. There are literally thousands of open source projects out there. Each has its own users, its own committers, its own managers.

The most popular projects are not necessarily the most important, although if you go to Sourceforge that’s the way they are listed. And when PR folks representing open source projects call, they will often reference the popularity of their downloads there as equating to importance.

In fact, the importance of any particular project is a matrix.
* How deep in the stack is it? Linux will always be vital because it is an operating system so many other projects depend upon.
*How many real users does it have? This does not mean desktop Linux projects are all that vital. It does mean that Google software is.
*What value does it deliver? Based on this I would argue that mySQL is a very important project. But remember it is also the base for many other projects.
*How unique is it? Any project that takes open source into a new direction — to phones or inside the network — is important.

Following are extracted from this PDF doc linkopen source top 50

Eclipse
- Comprehensive development environment for JAVA,PHP, C, C++, and more

iFolder
- Those Novell guys just won't quit
- Allows seamless file sharing and synchronization
- across platforms

Subversion
- Primarily for source code but also good for text/html

Mantis
- Bug tracking system w/Email notification
- Similar to BugZilla, much easier to install and use
- We use this tool probably more than any other tool

Planner
- Project tool, was once known as MrProject, really
- Does a nice job for basic to intermediate project planning needs
- Not specific to technology projects, offer extensible options for resources and task hierarchies


OpenOffice
- Definitive OS Office Suite, Word Processor,SpreadSheet, Drawing/Diagramming and Presentation Tool
- 2.0 is extremely compelling, ODF is a huge leap

MediaWiki
- Wiki System in PHP
­- Popular, The Wikipedia Wiki!
­- Great as "thought management" system
- Many user driven sites build documentation this way for better or worse

Evolution
- Outlook replacement for Linux

K3B
- CD burning done right
- Ease of use comparable with EasyCD, Nero, etc.
- Nice features for creating CD's from downloaded
- Supports DVD's as well, DVD+RW, DVDRW

GIMP
- Best open source option for Adobe Photoshop like functionality Not as comprehensive as Photoshop

Tomboy
- Note tracking application
- New solution to the Post It Notes problems

Beagle
- Search tool for the Personal Information
- Builds on Google, Yahoo desktop search

Thunderbird
- Companion email application to FireFox
- Look at latest versions for integration withcalendaring, groupware, etc



Jabber
- definitive Open Source Instant Messaging System
- If you are thinking about corporate IM look a Jabber

Joomla
- Main Marketing Content, front pages of website­
- Templates compatible with Macromedia
- Dreamweaver, CSS Driven
- Great default templates, clean and crisp­
- Multi format delivery PDF, print, email
- The sales guys can use it. The designers like it.

Zabbix
Monitoring tool along the lines of Nagios and Cacti written in PHP