// shall I write some keywords here to boost search engine ranking?

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Ohloh.net : Digg-clone for Open Source Project and more

In the Java community, we always have a few API/framework to do similar thing. For example: JDK util logging vs log4j, Hibernate vs iBatis, and not to mention the overflow of MVC framework.



For management, it is not easy to decide which technology to be implement in software project. For developer, it is also difficult to learn the right technology/API/framework from open source community.



Ohloh.net idea is to be a central directory of all these open source project (open source project of all programming language, include Java). You may sign up, and digg the open source project you used (they use the term 'stack'). Ohloh.net display the number of  stack from user, as a reference of its popularity.



Besides that, it also provide information and statistic on open source project. For example, you may view language trend by this graph of commit over time.



One thing I notice on this web app is that it lack of mechanism to prevent and let user report  on duplicate project. For example, when I search "jQuery", the first 2 results i get is "jQuery" and "jQuery JavaScript Library", which is actually same project.



The number of developers who use open source project, is always more than those who involve in open source development. Ohloh.net will be a good place for open source project user to contribute to the community to help other develop to make their  choice in the crowded open source world.





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