Over at O’Reilly Nat Torkington asked what the three most important open source projects were.
I (and many others) listed:
- Linux
- Apache
- Mozilla
I said those because with them you have an end-to-end solution that can do pretty much anything. You have the OS, you have the internet server and you have the client that can talk to the internet server. Missing, possibly, is a programming language and environment but I see less of a threat of death against programming languages than I do against the operating system, server and client.
Naturally the OS covers quite a range of sub-projects including all the bits that make TCP/IP, routing etc. go on the internet. Within Apache too you can argue what is integral to it and what are sub-projects or add-on modules. I also listed Mozilla and not just Firefox because an email client, Thunderbird, is quite important and Mozilla also covers XUL and other supporting frameworks that can be used to create new and existing client applications.
I would have liked to have included Ruby on Rails and Java in the list because they are why I am employed. But I am just one person and the other three projects have broader scope.
Though one could say if you just listed an operating system and a programming language and environment you would have everything covered as together they could create the server, clients and everything else. But that is a bit too high-level and so much has been already done in Apache and Mozilla that to loose them and start again would be a severe blow to computing technology.
What are your three?
