Ask Slashdot: What's the Biggest Open Source Project of 2015? 113
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?
.net (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely
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.Not surely.
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Seconded. The sheer scope of causing hell to freeze that hard that many times in a single year is nothing short of amazing. First it was .Net Framework, then the CLR, then the compilers, then a small portion of Visual Studio (!), then the entirety of ASP.Net and .Net Core... The devil himself slipped on the ice* and broke his hip a few months back.
*Not really ice, but frozen essence of tortured souls that solidified due to the lowered temperature.
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Makes as much sense in text as the freakin' question. "What's the biggest" and then "that aren't getting the recognition they deserve?" Well, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, if it isn't getting the recognition it deserves, it isn't the "biggest" this year. Maybe next year, when they're better appreciated.
Personally, I don't think anything significant happened this year in open source. Almost everything of note was an incremental improvement unworthy of an isolated shout-out separated from the co
OpenAI initative sounds interesting (Score:2)
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It is just getting started. But if it lives up to its hype it could be interesting.
There's been better than that. Whether or not one likes deep learning, unlike most advances in such things before, people have been freely releasing both the code and trained models. This has really spurred development as it's take it down from being only available to the largest labs to within reach of anyone with a $700 video card.
But it's not a single project.
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Sure, it is just a framework without any meat, but if AI people adopt it then it might be something commonly used.
The actual algorithms used with it would still be the important part in any use case, though.
Framework (Score:5, Funny)
BINGO! (Score:3)
Re: BINGO! (Score:2)
Quit posting as cowards, I would like to know who my fans and friends are, or will be
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I'm laughing/crying-out-loud because you just perfectly described my fledging startup...
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If you want to "forget computers" then there are a myriad of other, non-tech focused communities with online discussion available for you. Go join one.
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The world will be here long after the carbon based infestation is gone.
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The world will still be here, even when here is over there. Rocks aren't subject to the existential boundaries of life. Non-living things must always continue to Be, for energy is conserved and they are but the sum of their parts.
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Even if it does, I doubt it'll be a comfortable ride.
Still, if I'm around to experience it that'll be a result.
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You missed the entire point, sorry. Keep parsing.
Assume that my comment was literally correct, and then parse for the understanding that makes sense. You'll figure out what I said a lot more quickly that way. Did you think I didn't know about the expected expansion of the Sun? The thing is, if I made the 5-year-old level mistake that you presume, there would be no content left in my statement. It makes way more sense as the correct statement that I made than it does as the misunderstanding you imply.
What is
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I suspect you're going to fail to convert energy production to sustainable sources without computers.
As for moral concerns, just switch to the term "Free Software" instead of "Open Source" and you'll find the people that are trying to use it to save the world.
If it says "open source" then people aren't trying to save the world, they're just trying to establish personal freedom.
KDE (Score:4, Informative)
KDE
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You misread the title. It was biggest not buggiest. And I say this as someone who has used KDE since its inception. It's a disgrace how unfinished the "stable" releases are.
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And yet it still manages to be more usable than Gnome, Unity, Windows, or OSuX.
But not Xfce4
Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Yes (Score:2)
Yeah still even more excited about the port of SCCM to Linux! Nothing besides systemD excites system admins more
No brainer (Score:3, Insightful)
Bitcoin.
If the question really is "biggest" not "favorite" (Score:4, Insightful)
The Linux Kernel, Android, and Webkit are my top picks.
LLVM is also hugely important.
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> LLVM is also hugely important.
Thank you! I depend on it every day.
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Same functionality, bigger codesize? Not so good.
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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.
WIKIPEDIA OBVIOUSLY. (Score:2)
They are so big they can afford a gigantic full page nag on every single page.
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Apple Swift 2.0 (Score:1)
Re:Apple Swift 2.0 (Score:5, Funny)
This a million times. Swift is set to become the standard language for pretty much all future software development moving forward. It already dwarfs the lower quality niche alternatives like Go and Rust in terms of users and deployed applications. It already has millions of active developers, and has a proper permissive license so the freetards don't get to tell us what we can and cannot do with our own computers. Plus it is backed by the only company in technology that is doing anything interesting any more. It's basically the premier open source project right now, easily dwarfing stagnant stuff like the linux kernel and apache spark in terms of developer interest and innovation, and the fact that these idiots didn't pick it just goes to show how utterly inept the mainstream tech media really is.
Late to the game: Swift (Score:5, Interesting)
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Ok, a new programming language that doesn't do anything new, but is better than the crap Apple forced people to use before? Yeah, sure, sounds really big!
Not saying there is anything wrong with swift but there are tons of programming languages out there that are invented all the time. Nothing in swift is groundbreaking. The only reason for its popularity is that Objective-C is very bad.
Nothing is groundbreaking but for a number of reasons the open source community hasn't exactly embraced Java or C#, so most of it is written in C dating back to the 70s or its hacked-on OOP cousins C++ and Objective-C from the 80s. I'm not sure if Swift will do any better, but it's at least written will all the know-how we've gathered since then. A language is never going to make a poor developer into a good one though.
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The only reason people use Swift (or Objective-C) is because they're the only options supported by Apple.
You could go with C or C++, but you'd be on your own.
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The scope for Swift is enormous: use it for everything from operating systems to scripting
As opposed to other programming languages. There is no other language that can do that.
Stop drinking the Kool-Aid, man. Swift is going to be slightly better than Objective C. That's it.
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How is that relevant for Open Source? You can only use it on a closed platform.
Can you use it on GNUstep yet?
openssl? (Score:1)
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.
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Dunno if 2015 is a good year for the OpenSSL project.
LibreSSL is being ported to other operating systems, and they're working on a new API that is supposedly much easier to work with than OpenSSL's.
We'll see how it goes adoption wise, but I would not be surprised if 2015 is the beginning of the end for OpenSSL.
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We'll see how it goes adoption wise, but I would not be surprised if 2015 is the beginning of the end for OpenSSL.
Let's wait until Netcraft confirms it.
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Well, let's move to the obvious conclusion then: the project that isn't getting enough attention is LibreSSL.
Those guys have been running on a shoestring and disgust with OpenSSL from day 1 and not getting much support. They could both turn in a new, improved solution pretty soon with just a little more.
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I'll admit that I don't hang out on the OpenBSD mailing lists, but I'm surprised to hear the LibreSSL team doesn't get much support. Theo himself was working on it, at least in the early days, and I had the impression the other devs on the project were pretty high profile. If they're not being funded out of OpenBSD's development fund or equivalent (again, I'm speaking out of ignorance about how the OpenBSD organization works), I'd be very surprised.
Things have shifted quite a bit - it works more or less a
Shorewall (Score:1)
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For small values of "the community".
Shorewall is but one of many add-ons to make Linux netfilter firewall easier to use, and while it may be great for those who use it, it's far from the only game in town, or even the biggest. Most people have probably not even heard about it.
The maintainers of the underlying kernel firewall deserve more of the kudos, in my opinion. (Sometimes they're the same people.)
Should be easy enough... (Score:5, Funny)
git pull and then du -sh.
The biggest project should be pretty objectively obvious.
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git pull what?
git pull https://github.com/**/*.git [github.com] ?
Erlang 2.0 /Psycho bitch!!! (Score:2)
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! [youtu.be]
Virtualbox (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Yep (Score:2)
My authority DNS server which I will release next week.
HHVM (Score:3)
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.
Rehash (Score:2)
This year I've become a huge fan and user of Rehash [github.com].
Is this a pissing contest or something ? (Score:3)
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 [pwsafe.org] smallest [liquidninja.com]. Some of the most important and critical open-source software is also among the smallest and least 'recognised' [gnupg.org]. And some of the biggest open-source projects are also the biggest causes for concern [php.net].
Are we all hoping for prizes or something ? ... how childish.
Oh dear
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>> Is this a pissing contest or something ?
Oh Yeah. It's a code pissing contest.
Qubes OS (Score:2)
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).
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Cryptography is useless without strong endpoint security, and Qubes offers the latter. As for UX, the launcher menus look awful (app links duplicated for each VM you create) but it gets better from there. The thing to remember is that Qubes UI is still under development, and its getting better.
I'm not sure why you think Qubes offers only a false sense of security. It does exactly the opposite of promising that any exposed apps or domains will remain secure; What's important is their strict isolation from ea
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java_grinder (Score:2)
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https://xkcd.com/801/ [xkcd.com]
OS/2 Warp Clone... (Score:2)
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Firefox OS, systemd, Blender, the Atom stuff (Score:2)
In my opinion Firefox OS [mozilla.org] 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 amo
The GPL. (Score:2)
ReactOS and GNUstep (Score:2)
Atom Electron (Score:2)
Electron [electron.atom.io] 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