Open Source Software - Projects and Organizations

Projects and Organizations

One of the benefits of open source software is that there are a wide variety of codes in OSS projects for program developers. Without any blocking of this wide and diverse platform, developers create a wide range of projects and organizations. Some of the "more prominent organizations" involved in OSS development include the Apache Software Foundation, creators of the Apache web server; the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit which as of 2012 employed Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system kernel; the Eclipse Foundation, home of the Eclipse software development platform; the Debian Project, creators of the influential Debian GNU/Linux distribution; the Mozilla Foundation, home of the Firefox web browser; and OW2, European-born community developing open source middleware. New organizations tend to have a more sophisticated governance model and their membership is often formed by legal entity members.

Several open source programs have become defining entries in their space, including the GIMP image editing system; Sun's Java programming language and environment; the MySQL database system; the FreeBSD Unix operating system; Sun's OpenOffice.org office productivity suite; and the Wireshark network packet sniffer and protocol analyser.

Open Source development is often performed "live and in public", using services provided for free on the Internet, such as the Launchpad and SourceForge web sites, and using tools that are themselves Open Source, including the CVS and Subversion source control systems, and the GNU Compiler Collection.

Open Source for America is a group created to raise awareness in the U.S. Federal Government about the benefits of open source software. Their stated goals are to encourage the government’s use of open source software, participation in open source software projects, and incorporation of open source community dynamics to increase government transparency.

Mil-OSS is a group dedicated to the advancement of OSS use and creation in the military.

Read more about this topic:  Open Source Software

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