Open Source » Development Tools

10 new open source projects to watch

One of the most exciting things about open-source software is the sheer diversity of projects that are always under way. Aiming to recognize some of the most promising of those projects, Black Duck Software on Friday announced its 2010 open-source "Rookies of the Year" list.

By Katherine Noyes | 11 January, 2011 06:33

Tags: Black Duck Software, open source, software

Slideshow: Open source at Facebook

It’s loved by millions and has risen from a small-time university social networking service to the biggest phenomenon on the Internet. It’s the phenomenon that is Facebook. Popularity, however, doesn’t come easy. With some 400 million unique home pages Facebook is pushing the boundaries of traditional Web application scalability and it’s not shy to admit that it has been achieved by leveraging open source software. We take a look at some of the slides presented by Facebook at this year's FOSDEM conference in Belgium.

By Rodney Gedda | 24 February, 2010 14:25

Tags: cloud computing, Facebook, open source, social networks

Horde open source groupware preps version 4 release

The Horde open source messaging and groupware project is gearing up for the first major release of its application suite and development environment in years with version 4 due in mid-2010.

By Rodney Gedda | 06 April, 2010 11:44

Tags: ajax, caldav, groupware, horde, open source, php

Open source identity: Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson

Web application development reached a new paradigm with the release of Ruby on Rails back in 2004. Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson has since been at the helm of one of the most successful and popular open source software development projects. Ruby on Rails, or just Rails, has allowed thousands of developers to create complex applications rapidly in a consistent manner. Open Source Identity catches up David Heinemeier Hansson to find out what the early days of Rails was like and what the future holds.

By Rodney Gedda | 22 October, 2009 10:51

Tags: frameworks, open source, open source identity, ruby, ruby on rails, web development

Killer open source monitoring tools

In the real estate world, the mantra is location, location, location. In the network and server administration world, the mantra is visibility, visibility, visibility. If you don't know what your network and servers are doing at every second of the day, you're flying blind. Sooner or later, you're going to meet with disaster.

By Paul Venezia | 25 November, 2008 09:32

Tags: open source

A prescription for lower costs

Open source technologies help McKesson deliver lower-cost IT solutions to its healthcare customers by trimming the tab for hardware and software.

By Paul Desmond | 21 November, 2008 09:34

Tags: healthcare, open source

Specialty Linuxes to the rescue

Linux is, among other things, a customizable operating system. Clever developers can craft a Linux whose kernel and packages are configured for a specific purpose, to serve as a sort of vertical-market operating system. The benefit to users is somewhat akin to walking into a hardware store. On the shelves are tools, each suited to a specific task. And it's particularly nice that all the tools are free.

By Rick Grehan | 12 November, 2008 09:22

Tags: Linux, open source

Open source: What you should learn from the French

A decade ago, European countries leapt out of the gate to take the lead in the radical open source movement -- none more so than France -- and left US developers in the proverbial dust. Through policies and high-profile projects, the French Republic for years has been advocating for all open source all the time, in government and education.

Kernel space: udev rules, but whose?

Once upon a time, a Linux distribution would be installed with a /dev directory fully populated with device files. Most of them represented hardware which would never be present on the installed system, but they needed to be there just in case. Toward the end of this era, it was not uncommon to find systems with around 20,000 special files in /dev, and the number continued to grow. This scheme was unwieldy at best, and the growing number of hotpluggable devices (and devices in general) threatened to make the whole structure collapse under its own weight. Something, clearly, needed to be done.

By Jonathan Corbet | 21 August, 2008 12:04

Tags: Linux

Google's unhappy Android developers

For a long time, Google has led a largely blissful existence, fostering a widespread perception -- sometimes in direct contradiction to the facts -- that it can do no wrong. Yet the company's controversial Android mobile platform venture threatens to seriously dent this notion, at least with some of the people it needs most.

20 great Windows open source projects you should get to know

No one loves to pay crazy per-user licensing fees, not to mention 15- 22 per cent annual support residuals. (And no one loves the endless, mind-numbing meetings with non-technical financial folks trying to pry budget for these tools from their clenched fists.) So today we're going to discuss tools that are free. However, we are not naming them to this list of "great" tools simply because they cost nothing. These are some of the best lesser-known tools out there.

Survey: Open Source is Entering the Enterprise Mainstream

Open-source solutions used to be adopted quietly by company boffins who snuck in an Apache Web server or an open-source development tool suite under the philosophy "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission" (not to mention "It's easier to do it with open-source tools than to get an IT budget").

Publishing high-quality documents with Kile

Discerning typesetters have long relied on Tex and LaTeX for impeccable-looking documents. Now they have a front-end that works under Linux and BSD and brings control of the compilers and related utilities under the comprehensive graphical user interface. Authors and editors who use Kile can get increased productivity in the document creation business. This article will highlight some of Kile's key features which make it so attractive for newcomers to LaTeX.