The natural extension of the “Etymology of a Distro” blog would be delving deeper into Open Source project’s etymologies. Indeed many readers already suggested that. Here are 20 Open Source applications and the interesting (and not so interesting) stories behind their names...

Most people used to the proprietary software world, with no experience in open source software, are amazed that anything gets done. (And lots gets done in the open source, way more than in most proprietary software companies!) And people new to open source are usually at a loss as to where to start.

It is not uncommon to read about projects that are suffering from lack of development resources. Let's be honest: no project has 'enough' people, ever. There's always something else that could be getting done 'if only we had another pair of hands!' Some projects suffer more than others, however.

"There are many services that will host your project's source code, mailing lists and bug trackers. While very few of these services charge for their services, most of them are built on proprietary software. Worse, some of them have started adding adverts for proprietary software in their mailing lists, or refusing projects with certain free software licenses [...] So, what's the alternative?

You think, text-console programs look boring? Then run them in an environment that looks more interesting.
AKFAvatar can be used as a wrapper for text-console programs.
It can be used to make simple demos and much more…

Version 0.15.1 is out since sunday.

Our database now contains over 2000 projects that are using the GPL v3. This is a large milestone for the license, and seems to still be the beginning of wider adoption. Nine months have passed since the release of the controversial license and it has already gained 2k projects.

A community driven project for Ruby source code to run natively on Microsoft's .NET framework has shut down, faced by progress from an official Microsoft effort.