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This is a weird premise. It's github. Of course it is predominantly tools for coders. End user applications have wholly separate paths to the user. An applicati

This is a weird premise. It's github. Of course it is predominantly tools for coders. End user applications have wholly separate paths to the user. An application could have a handful of contributors/stars/downloads etc. on github and still have millions of downloads somewhere else (a project I work on fits that description). And, it might not be on github at all and still be used by millions daily. I guarantee openssh, Firefox, LibreOffice, and probably a hundred other applications, are (orders of magnitude) more popular than the top applications on this list. So, if this were titled, "Most open source software on github..." I wouldn't object. But, I have to completely reject the premise here, because I know that there's an entire iceberg of OSS software, including applications, that is completely excluded from the listing by virtue of either not being on github or being on github, but not using github as its primary method of distribution and promotion, and this data completely ignores everything below the surface. Also, it's probably dangerous to begin to think of "Open Source Software" as only being "Software that has a public github repo".

Randgalt 9y ago
You're right of course. I'm the main author of Apache Curator. While it does have a mirror on Github it's mostly consumed via its Maven Central repo. The Maven Central repo is most likely a better source of open source project usage.
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  Here's how amazingly wide and diverse our OSS world is: I have never even heard of Maven Central.
  - Randgalt 9y ago
    Maybe not - but some tool that you use probably gets it artifacts from it. http://search.maven.org http://search.maven.org - https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Maven-central-repository https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Maven-central-repository
    - SwellJoe 9y ago
      I'm not saying me having never heard of it makes it less relevant, popular, etc. I'm saying OSS has become so widespread that an entire ecosystem, seemingly with thousands of packages, can exist completely out of my awareness, despite me being involved in OSS for a couple of decades and having much broader (though often not deeper) interests than most, due to my work. In defense of my ignorance, I haven't written a line of Java in years, and I assume this is a predominantly Java ecosystem (due to the "Maven" part of the name).
      - Randgalt 9y ago
        Yeah that's true. Think of the npm ecosystem, the burgeoning Go ecosystem, etc. All full worlds with their own repos, etc.
jsgo 9y ago
Honestly though, I don't think that's far off in that even those you mentioned are leveraged as a library (Firefox maybe not, not sure. Chrome can be used headless so guessing there's a possibility for Firefox. Some of the open source internals are used in other projects though). But OpenSSH for sure is used within other software. Okay, maybe libreoffice isn't a case (at least I don't think it is). At this point, I just love seeing GUI software I leverage also coming with a CLI. I learn what it can do for me with the GUI and then can use the CLI to manage the heavy lifting for me.
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  We could name hundreds, probably thousands, of OSS applications that are more popular than the laughably obscure #4 and #5 in the list in the article (not laughable in the sense that I mean to devalue their work, just that they are so clearly for an extremely niche user, and that user is a programmer). I don't really care to argue semantics about what's a library vs. what's an app. Because many libraries have a UI and many apps have an API; that's another discussion, really (though, you've got tens of millions of people using Firefox through the UI daily and maybe a few thousand using it as a library daily...I know where I fall on the "is it an app or a library" continuum). But, seriously, this article looked at one pile of data generated by a site that is entirely by and for programmers and declared that the entirety of OSS is represented by that data. The more I think about it, the more ridiculous, and maybe even offensive, it seems.
- KamBha 9y ago
  Regarding FF headless mode:- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1338004 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1338004 Basically, WIP. For now, if you have NodeJS:- https://slimerjs.org/ https://slimerjs.org/ It is kinda headless.
- jcelerier 9y ago
  > At this point, I just love seeing GUI software I leverage also coming with a CLI. I really wonder what is the point of a CLI for, say, Krita or LibreOffice.
  - 9y ago
skgoa 9y ago
Yeah, this reminds me of the annual claims regarding what programming languages are the most popular based solely on github repos or stackoverflow questions. The methodology is completely inadequate for producing an answer that can be trusted.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> It's github. Of course it is predominantly tools for coders. End user applications have wholly separate paths to the user. To the user sure, but if they are open source, bazaar-model projects, they still need a route to contributors, and GitHub is as suited for that for end user apps as it is for libraries. So while, yes, it's possible that GitHub is unrepresentative for some other reasons, I don't think that “GitHub is for developers” is a reason to dismiss this kind of statistic. OTOH, it may well be that apps, even open source, are more likely to be cathedral model (instead of bazaar) than libraries, which might reduce the need for using GitHub or some other public repository.
stcredzero 9y ago
Of course it is predominantly tools for coders. End user applications have wholly separate paths to the user Libraries and tools for coders -- what's particular about these? These are the areas where programmers are also the domain experts! So is it any wonder that these are the projects that succeed? I guarantee openssh, Firefox, LibreOffice, and probably a hundred other applications, are (orders of magnitude) more popular than the top applications on this list. Let's look at the success of end-user open source applications. Is there a pattern of success being correlated with prevalence of the domain knowledge in the programmer population? There will be other influences, which will bring in corporate resources and skew the degree of success, but I think this pattern holds there as well.
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  "So is it any wonder that these are the projects that succeed?" ...on github, a community of programmers.

Randgalt 9y ago

You're right of course. I'm the main author of Apache Curator. While it does have a mirror on Github it's mostly consumed via its Maven Central repo. The Maven Central repo is most likely a better source of open source project usage.

SwellJoe 9y ago
Here's how amazingly wide and diverse our OSS world is: I have never even heard of Maven Central.
- Randgalt 9y ago
  Maybe not - but some tool that you use probably gets it artifacts from it. http://search.maven.org http://search.maven.org - https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Maven-central-repository https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Maven-central-repository
  - SwellJoe 9y ago
    I'm not saying me having never heard of it makes it less relevant, popular, etc. I'm saying OSS has become so widespread that an entire ecosystem, seemingly with thousands of packages, can exist completely out of my awareness, despite me being involved in OSS for a couple of decades and having much broader (though often not deeper) interests than most, due to my work. In defense of my ignorance, I haven't written a line of Java in years, and I assume this is a predominantly Java ecosystem (due to the "Maven" part of the name).
    - Randgalt 9y ago
      Yeah that's true. Think of the npm ecosystem, the burgeoning Go ecosystem, etc. All full worlds with their own repos, etc.

jsgo 9y ago

Honestly though, I don't think that's far off in that even those you mentioned are leveraged as a library (Firefox maybe not, not sure. Chrome can be used headless so guessing there's a possibility for Firefox. Some of the open source internals are used in other projects though). But OpenSSH for sure is used within other software. Okay, maybe libreoffice isn't a case (at least I don't think it is). At this point, I just love seeing GUI software I leverage also coming with a CLI. I learn what it can do for me with the GUI and then can use the CLI to manage the heavy lifting for me.

SwellJoe 9y ago
We could name hundreds, probably thousands, of OSS applications that are more popular than the laughably obscure #4 and #5 in the list in the article (not laughable in the sense that I mean to devalue their work, just that they are so clearly for an extremely niche user, and that user is a programmer). I don't really care to argue semantics about what's a library vs. what's an app. Because many libraries have a UI and many apps have an API; that's another discussion, really (though, you've got tens of millions of people using Firefox through the UI daily and maybe a few thousand using it as a library daily...I know where I fall on the "is it an app or a library" continuum). But, seriously, this article looked at one pile of data generated by a site that is entirely by and for programmers and declared that the entirety of OSS is represented by that data. The more I think about it, the more ridiculous, and maybe even offensive, it seems.
KamBha 9y ago
Regarding FF headless mode:- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1338004 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1338004 Basically, WIP. For now, if you have NodeJS:- https://slimerjs.org/ https://slimerjs.org/ It is kinda headless.
jcelerier 9y ago
> At this point, I just love seeing GUI software I leverage also coming with a CLI. I really wonder what is the point of a CLI for, say, Krita or LibreOffice.
- 9y ago

skgoa 9y ago

Yeah, this reminds me of the annual claims regarding what programming languages are the most popular based solely on github repos or stackoverflow questions. The methodology is completely inadequate for producing an answer that can be trusted.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> It's github. Of course it is predominantly tools for coders. End user applications have wholly separate paths to the user. To the user sure, but if they are open source, bazaar-model projects, they still need a route to contributors, and GitHub is as suited for that for end user apps as it is for libraries. So while, yes, it's possible that GitHub is unrepresentative for some other reasons, I don't think that “GitHub is for developers” is a reason to dismiss this kind of statistic. OTOH, it may well be that apps, even open source, are more likely to be cathedral model (instead of bazaar) than libraries, which might reduce the need for using GitHub or some other public repository.

stcredzero 9y ago

Of course it is predominantly tools for coders. End user applications have wholly separate paths to the user Libraries and tools for coders -- what's particular about these? These are the areas where programmers are also the domain experts! So is it any wonder that these are the projects that succeed? I guarantee openssh, Firefox, LibreOffice, and probably a hundred other applications, are (orders of magnitude) more popular than the top applications on this list. Let's look at the success of end-user open source applications. Is there a pattern of success being correlated with prevalence of the domain knowledge in the programmer population? There will be other influences, which will bring in corporate resources and skew the degree of success, but I think this pattern holds there as well.

SwellJoe 9y ago
"So is it any wonder that these are the projects that succeed?" ...on github, a community of programmers.