The stories, philosophies, and people behind the code that shaped computing.
This is not a software directory. It's a cultural publication that treats open source software with the same reverence that the Public Domain Review gives to classic literature and art. Code is culture. Open source has heroes. Their stories deserve to be told.
In the spring of 2000, a programmer working on a battleship got frustrated with Informix. Twenty-five years later, SQLite runs on every smartphone on Earth.
How id Software's 1997 source release spawned an industry of open game development and changed what "giving back" means in gaming.
"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu)." History's most understated announcement.
The essential projects every reader should know. These are the "greatest hits" of open source—the software that shaped computing, freed users, and changed what's possible.
"We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us."— John Culkin (often attributed to McLuhan)