Ravi Saive posted a question on Linux Inside FaceBook page asking users to mention the best open-source software they found in 2019 and boy did the comments come in.

I have decided to compile the applications our followers mentioned into a list which since the mentions are still coming in, is non-exhaustive.

LibreOffice is a free and open-source office suite written in C++, Java, and Python. It was first released in January 2011 by The Document Foundation and has since known to be the most reliable open-source office suite.

Usually used as an alternative to Microsoft Office Suite, it is regularly updated and is also compatible withdoc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx files.

Nextcloud is an open-source, self-hosted file sharing platform with support for communicating and collaborating with teams.

Its functionality is similar to that of Dropbox and ownCloud, and you can use it to sync your files, calendars, and other data formats.

Adminer is a minimalist Database Management System (DBMS) in a single PHP file and it focuses on security, UX, performance, feature set, and size.

It ships with several inbuilt themes and features all the operations you can perform in phpMyAdmin with the promise of offering a tidier UI with high performance and better support for MySQL features.

Slim Framework is a PHP micro-framework that enables users to write powerful web applications and APIs in a simpler way.

Fundamentally, it works as a dispatcher that receives an HTTP request, invokes an appropriate callback routine, and then returns an HTTP response.

uniCenta is an open-source commercial-grade Point Of Sale dedicated to providing business owners with innovative POS applications.

Its features include modules for system control, sales, inventory, suppliers, employees, customers, and reports.

Bitwarden is a free and open-source password manager for keeping digital records away from the sight of unauthorized users.

It features a clean minimalist UI with several client applications including one for a web interface, desktop, mobile apps, etc. and can be used by individuals, teams, and organizations.

The Elastic Stack is made up of various open-source applications designed to enable users to collect data from any source irrespective of its format and type.

It also enables users to search, analyze, and visualize data in real-time and it can be distributed as Software as a Service (Saas) or installed on-premise.

Steam is not open-source but it is regarded as the ultimate online gaming platform, is an online community where you can easily search, install, and manage game collections for different OS platforms.

SteamOS + Linux on Steam is the best thing that has happened to gamers in the Linux community.

The cockpit is a user-friendly, integrated, glanceable, extendable, and web-based GUI for managing servers. It is designed to have a beautiful, modern UI with support for teams, integration with the terminal, multi-server administration, and built-introubleshootingtools.

The NET Core refers to the free and open-source general-purpose software development framework for Linux, macOS, and Windows Operating Systems. It contains the .NET Native runtime and CoreRTand it can be used in device, cloud, and embedded/IoT scenarios.

IPFire is a versatile open-source Linux-based firewall that is easy to use and offers high performance in any scenario. IPFire originally started as an IPCop fork but was rewritten from scratch in version 2.

Flameshot is a simple but powerful screenshot application for Linux, that you can use to interact with it via GUI or CLI and perform markup operations on a per-screenshot basis.

Brave Browser is a free and open-source Chromium-based browser that ships with more features than Chrom typically does. It is customizable, security-focused, user-friendly, and ships with an inbuilt adblocker and password manager among other features.

BRL-CAD is a free and open-source cross-platform solid modeling system that includes interactive geometry editing, a system performance analysis benchmark suite, geometry libraries for application developers, and high-performance ray-tracing for rendering and geometric analysis.

ssh-chat is a custom SSH server through which you can hold secure chats with a limited number of users over an ssh connection. It is specially designed to convert your SSH server into a chat service after which you get a chat prompt rather than a typical shell.

PhotoRec is a CLI utility software for data recovery capable of recovering files with over 480 extensions. It is compatible with various digital camera memory, hard disks, and CD-ROMs.

GParted is a GUI utility for managing disk partitions and is capable of resizing, moving, and copying partitions without data loss. It is excellent at manipulating file systems including xfs, ufs, ntfs, udf, fat16/fat32, ext2/ext3/ext4, btrfs, etc.

Restic is an open-source CLI-based utility for performing backups easily, securely, quickly, and efficiently for free. It uses Semantic Versioning to always allow for backward compatibility within one major version.

Rclone is a command line-based utility for synchronizing files and directories to and from several storage locations including Dropbox, FTP, Hubic, Dreamhost, OVH, Nextcloud, Yandex Disk, etc.

Rclones features include checking for file hash equality, timestamps preserved on files, one-way sync mode to directories, Union backend, etc.

Minio is a private cloud storage stack that provides scalable and persistent object storage for several infrastructures including Docker, Kubernetes, GCP, etc.

Cmus is a powerful but lightweight CLI-based music player app for playing audio files from the terminal on Unix-like Operating Systems.

Etcher is a cross-platform GUI utility for easily and safely flashing OS images to SD cards and USB drives.

Cargo is a package manager for the Rust programming language and it is efficient at downloading the necessary Rust dependencies for your project as well as compiling the packages into distributable packages that it then uploads to crates.io.

Sayonara Player is a C++ audio player and library manager for Linux devices. It features several advanced functionalities including extending its features list with extensions, directory view, recording webstreams and podcasts, an inbuilt tag editor, crossfade, equalizer, etc.

Helm is a package manager created by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation for Kubernetes and it provides users with the easiest way to discover, share, and built Kubernetes applications.

Kubernetes also referred to as k8s, is an open-source system for automating application management, scaling, and deployment.

ClickHouse is an open-source column-oriented Database Management System for generating analytical data reports in real-time using SQL. It is linearly scalable, fault-tolerant, simple to use, and hardware efficient.

Shotcut is a free, cross-platform and open-source video editor with wide support for video formats, and a clean User Interface. It features network stream playback, IP stream, webcam and audio capture, support for 4K resolution, capture from SDI, etc.

Kdenlive is an advanced free and open-source video editing software with support for multi-track video editing, proxy editing, timeline preview, automatic backup, and audio and video scopes.

Kdenlive also features several online resources for users, a titler for creating 2D titles, a configurable UI, etc.

Rufus is a lightweight utility for creating bootable USB flash drives and flashing BIOS or other firmware from DOS. It can also be used to format drives and can be run directly from a memory stick as a portable app.

DSpace is a customizable open-source dynamic digital repository whose aim is to make information easy to access, use, and manage. It is used in several academic, commercial, and non-profit settings for building open digital repositories.

Stellarium is an open-source OpenGL-powered planetarium software that shows a 3D simulation of the night sky in real-time. It also contains details of all the planetary bodies and constellations with engaging visualizations.

Krita is a cross-platform open-source raster graphics editor for digital painting and creating animations. It is among the most popular digital painting tools with features like native support for CMYK, a clutter-free UI, efficient resource management, a pop-up color palette, etc.

Tvheadend (TVH) is a Linux recorder and TV streaming server with support for various streaming formats includingISDB-T, IPTV, SAT>IP, ATSC, DVB-S2, DVB-S, DVB-C, etc.

OpenShot is a free, cross-platform, and open-source video editor created to be incredibly simple, powerful, and efficient. It features unlimited tracks, animations & keyframes, a title editor, slow motion and time effects, support for 70+ languages, etc.

GSConnect is an implementation of KDE Connect especially for GNOME shell with Nautilus, Firefox, and Chrome integration. Like KDEConnect, GSConnect allows devices to connect and share notifications, SMS messages, files, etc. e.g. connecting an Android device to an Ubuntu PC.

Borg Backup (short, Borg) is a deduplicating backup program with optional support for compression and encryption. It was built with the main goal of providing an efficient way to securely back data up.

Visual Studio Code is Microsofts free, cross-platform, and open-source feature-rich code editor. It is in the list top 5 GUI text editors used by developers and that comes as no surprise given its seemingly unending capabilities.

KeePass Password Safe is a free and open-source password manager that secures all your passwords and files in a single encrypted database. It is lightweight, easy to use, and multi-platform.

Discord is a proprietary freeware digital distribution platform and VoIP application created for gamers. It is cross-platform and supports both single-user and group chats with a specialty in communication via text, image, audio, and video between users.

Wine, which stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator, is a compatibility layer which enables its users to run Windows applications on any POSIX-compliant OS.

Wine cleanly integrates Windows apps with Linux desktops by translating Windows API calls into POSIX calls in real-time which eliminates the performance and memory repercussions of other methods.

Apache Synapse is a high-performance, lightweight Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) powered by the fast and asynchronousmediation engine that gives it support for Web Services, XML, and REST. It has so many features that you are better of checking its features page out yourself.

Pix is an advanced image browser, viewer, organizer, and editor forBMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, TGA, ICO, XPM image formats and optional support for RAW and HDR images.

It has advanced tools for editing images by adding comments, scaling them, finding duplicates, tools for viewing and browsing images such as working with slideshows, performing lossless JPG transformations, etc.

Geany is a cross-platform GTK+ text editor with the basic features of an IDE. It is designed to have few dependencies on external libraries while offering its users a speedy and memory-friendly performance.

openLCA is a free feature-rich Life Cycle Assessment software created by GreenDelta in 2006. With it, you can model and assess any product for the whole duration of its life cycle from resource extraction to production, its usage and disposal.

Gophish is a free, robust cross-platform phishing framework that enables individuals and organizations to easily test their network for phishing attacks.

It contains customizable templates as well as the ability to import/export them, campaigns which you can schedule to launch and send emails in the background, a real-time results tracker, and a full REST API.

Flutter is a mobile app development SDK created and maintained by Google. It allows users to build sleek native applications on both Android and iOS from a single codebase.

Flutter is also compatible with code for the web, React Native, and Xamarin and it features built-in animations, widgets, and OS-specific designs that speed up the development process.

GIMP is a feature-rich cross-platform image editing software most commonly used as the Linux alternative for Adobe Photoshop.

Apart from GIMP being capable of doing almost everything Photoshop can, its features are extensible via plugins thanks to its integration with several programming languages, and its files can be used with other media editing software like Inkscape, SwatchBooker, and Scribus.

Clementine is a feature-rich music player and library organizer and it is among the most popular music players for Linux. Its features include being cross-platform, a queue manager, remote control using a Wii remote, CLI or MPRIS, Android device, visualisations from projectM, etc.

Mailcow is an open source mail server that makes use of other smaller open source services to provide users with an enjoyable mailing experience.

It features a UI that enables users to complete administrativetasks, use temporaryspam aliases, work with KIM and ARC, reset SOGo ActiveSync devices caches, and integrate with Fail2ban-like software, among others.

DBeaver is a robust free multi-platform GUI database tool for developers, analysts, DB administrators, and SQL programmers. It has support for all popular databases not excluding MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, MS Access, Teradata, Sybase, Firebird, and Derby.

ONLYOFFICE is an open source office suite that is 100% compatible with the Microsoft Office suite. Its features include an online platform for creating and managing documents, team collaboration, calendar, and project and mail management tools.

ONLYOFFICE can integrate with your Saas or on-premise solution to provide your clients with a branded UI/UX, and web services like Nextcloud, SharePoint, Alfresco, etc.

Mailspring is a customizable cross-platform and open-source mail client created to boost users productivity and provide them with a more pleasant mailing experience.

It features a beautiful modern UI with several keyboard shortcuts and out of the box with features like click tracking, etc. and tons of other features that users can shell out some cash for.

Thunderbird is a free and open-source email client brought to you with love from the makers of Firefox. It was designed to be easy to set up and customize and it is among the most used email clients in the Linux community because of its rich feature set and it usually comes bundled with several distros.

VLC is a free, portable, multi-platform and open-source media player created by the VideoLAN project. It has maintained its rank as one of the most reliable media players you can use given the fact that it can play with almost any media format you throw at it. And for formats that it doesnt support out of the box, you can obtain the codecs.

VLC is also a streaming app so you can stream audio and video content online as you would in a browser without leaving the app.

Stacer is one of the coolest Linux system monitoring and optimizing software. It features a clean modern and intuitive interface with an informative dashboard and sleek icons.

You can use it to manage system services, startup processes, applications, script, files, etc. and you can work in different modes, limit its CPU and memory usage, customize its look, etc.

Godot Engine is a free and open-source game engine whose aim is to make the developers be creative with the games they make without reinventing the wheel or strings attached e.g. no royalties.

It is team-friendly, ships with a wide set of common tools to speed up game development. It features sleek 2D and 3D graphics and has its usage simplified. With Godot Engine, the games you build are 100% yours.

Inkscape is a professional free, cross-platform vector graphics editor for anybody with an interest in digital drawing. You can use it to create illustrations, icons, maps, web graphics, diagrams, etc.

Blender is a free and open-source professional 3D creation suite created with support for the entire 3D pipeline i.e. modeling, simulation, rigging, compositing, motion tracking, game creation, rendering, and video editing.

Cinelerrais a free and open-source software for professionally editing videos on Linux platforms. Its features include compositing, motion tracking, rendering, transitions, customizable text, effects, etc.

Mailspringis a freemium open-source email client application for Linux, Mac, and Windows computers. It is extensible with tons of add-ons with a feature set that includes link click tracking, open tracking, contacts enrichment data, a beautiful UI, etc.

Calibreis a free and cross-platform one-stop solution for electronic documents especially ebooks, comics, and PDFs. Its features include a robust ebook viewer, a built-in news/magazine downloader, advanced management options for ebook organization, and metadata update, to mention a few.

TexMaker is a free, cross-platform, and open-source LaTeX editor that enables users to create, edit, and manage LaTeX documents elegantly. It has a long feature including code folding, syntax highlighting, code completion, find in folders, unlimited number of snippets, and support for regular expressions, to mention a few.

FileZillais a free and open-source FTP solution that also has support for SFTP and FTP over TLS (FTPS). It features everything necessary for performing file operations from remote locations. Nevertheless, it offers enterprise-class users a paid package which bundles extra features such as additional protocol support for Dropbox, Google Cloud Storage, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure Blob, and WebDAV, to name a few.

Kodi is a beautiful, free, open-source, and multi-platform media center software from which you can manage and play music, movies, TV shows, and photo slideshows. It has good integration support and an awesome community.

Iris is a community-driven multi-platform web framework written in Go. It is easy to use and has now come to be among the fastest web frameworks housing several features including automatic HTTPS with Public Domain, caching, sessions, WebSocket, versioning API, dependency injection, MVC, and compatibility with 3rd-party packages and standard libraries.

Psiphon3 is a free and open-source network software designed for Windows and Android users to circumnavigate censorship while maintaining their optimal browsing and download speeds. It makes use of open-source components for SSH, VPN, and HTTP Proxy technology to provide users with uncensored online content.

Did you find any cool Linux apps in 2019 that are not on the list? Let us know in the comments section below.

Read more:
The Best Open Source Software in 2019 (Users' Choice)

Posted By Lucie Gaget on Mar 21, 2018 |

3D modeling software are useful for many different applications and could be a great asset for your business. It is a real advantage to develop your project, and it can be used for architectural projects, in the medical field or even in the fashion sector. Everything is possible. In this blog post we are going to see how a 3D modeling program could help you in your daily work and what an open-source software exactly is. Then, we will see what are the best available open-source CAD software in 2020 in order to help you find the right CAD tool for your company.

3D modeling software could be useful for your company for diverse applications. It can be used by engineers or designers, and even by amateurs. It is becoming a convenient and essential tool to work on designs, prototypes, or to produce 3D printed parts. You can use it to 3D model your parts in order to 3D print them, or just for the visualization of your projects.

Do you need to improve your design process or want to elaborate industrial designs?

These kinds of programs are particularly convenient if you are looking for a new prototyping process. Indeed, prototyping is becoming quite simple while using 3D modeling software and additive manufacturing. You can do many iterations at a lower cost, and you just have to modify your CAD model if you need to change something.

3D modeling software could also be a good solution to get a better visualization of your project or to improve your product design. From technical drawings to advanced 3D models for mechanical engineering, everything is possible if you choose the right CAD tool. We know that there is necessarily a software on the market that will fit your needs, and it may be an open-source software!

Open-Source software has a free public code that can be downloaded and modified by developers. It can be great if you want to add features to specific software in order to improve it, and adapt it to the use of your business. All the community can participate in the software development, anyone can write an extension to make the software better. It clearly has a collaborative aspect.

There are various open source CAD software programs available, that you can download for free. You can use them to create and modify your 3D models and develop your professional projects. Are you interested in starting 3D modeling with an open-source CAD software? Lets see what the best programs are for your business.

Here is a selection of the best open-source 3D CAD software for 3D applications. You will mainly find software for advanced users, as these programs are addressed to professionals or programmers.

FreeCAD is a parametric 3D modeling software. You dont need previous experience with 3D modeling to use it, but you can totally achieve complex models with it, for engineering or architecture projects. Indeed, it has professional features adapted to work for mechanical engineering. It can be used by anybody: home-users, designers, programmers and even educators.

If you need to 3D print your part, check our tutorial to learn how to prepare your 3D model to 3D printing using FreeCAD.

Blender is a widely used open-source software. It is useful to create various 3D designs, from electronic projects to digital art. It can create impressive models, using polygonal modeling techniques. You can use Blender to create simulations and animations.

You need to be experienced with 3D modeling, but if you need a little help, Blender has a really large community, offering a lot of tutorials.

If you are planning to 3D print your model, check out our tutorial to prepare your design for 3D printing using Blender.

OpenSCAD is an open-source parametric software, that can be used to create 2D designs, and 3D models. It is a great tool to make 3D objects designed for additive manufacturing. While using OpenSCAD, you cant modify directly with your mouse the CAD model that is in the viewer. This software uses its own language.

OpenSCAD is perfect if you need to create accurate models, but you have to keep in mind that it is really programmer oriented.

Wings 3D is a free open-source software. It offers a great variety of modeling tools, that could help you with all of your projects. It is a good software to create your CAD models and work on texture and materials. However, it is not the perfect tool if you need a CAD program for animation and rendering.

We have a tutorial that could help you to create your 3D model with Wings 3D.

OpenCascade Technology is a complete 3D modeling tool: from modeling to visualization, everything is possible. The geometric, topological and visualization algorithms of this program will allow you to create 3D models for any type of sectors, just for visualization, or for manufacturing processes.

SolveSpace is a parametric 2D/3D modeling software. It is a good tool if you need an open-source CAD software to export your 3D files for 3D printing. It has all the basic features of a 3D software, and it is possible to make complex designs. You can work on the design of an object or process mechanical simulations with this program.

Art of illusion is an animation oriented software. It is an open-source program, allowing to work on 3D modeling, texturing and material, but also able to make some rendering. Art of illusion is a high end animation program, powerful enough to be used professionally.

OpenJSCAD is an open-source CAD program. It is quite similar to OpenSCAD, that we discussed previously in this blogpost, but the difference is that OpenJSCAD is a browser-based program. It is easier to use. Indeed, it is a good solution as you dont need to install any software to create the 3D model that you want to 3D print.

Moreover, all the features are well explained on the website, you just have to follow the indications to create your own 3D designs.

JS Sketcher

JS Sketcher is a CAD program that you can access with your browser. This open-source parametric modeling software is written in javascript. For the moment, there are not too many features, so it is a simple software to use if you are just beginning with open-source programs, but you will still need a little bit of training at the beginning. This is a really promising software.

QCAD is a free computer-aided design software. It is hosted on GitHub and is open to any contributions. This 2D CAD software offers a wide range of CAD tools. This CAD program can be extended through its complete ECMAScript (JavaScript) interface.

This CAD tool software has been developed by Mike Muuss at the Army Research Laboratory and used by US military. They used it for academic, industrial or even health applications. This solid modeling systemhas been around since 1984, it simply became an open-source project in 2004.

It is now possible to use this program for engineering or graphic applications.

LibreCAD is a free open-source CAD with a large community of users, contributors and developers. This 2D CAD software is really complete and useful for laser cutting projects, for example. The source code can be downloaded directly from GitHub

If you are looking for an open-source software for chara-design: you have to try Makehuman! It has an intuitive interface, and perfect software tools for beginners. It is allowing you to use parametric modeling to create your characters, and to work on body proportion, faces, eyes, etc. This software offers a lot of possibilities, but you will not be able to create realistic 3D models with this CAD program

http://www.makehuman.org/

OpenFX is a 3D modeling software, it has a powerful feature set. This open source software is majoritarly used for chara-design. OpenFX is a flexible program, offering you a lot of possibilities in terms of chara-design. For example, you can make good skeleton structures and skinning with this 3D software. You can even simulate actions with the character that youve created, to see how your design reacts.

MolView is a molecular modeling software. It is a free web-application, with a steep learning curve, so it is possible to use it even if you have no previous CAD experience. This open-source program allows to create various projects such as structural formulas, simulation of proteins, etc.

You can watch the video below to get more information about this software:

Open VSP (Vehicle Space Pad) is an open-source software for aircraft. It has been developed by NASA. This is a serious and intuitive tool that will allow you to create CAD models easily and create accurate designs and mechanical overview for all your aircraft projects.

If you are just getting started, here is a tutorial for you to discover the basic CAD software options of OpenVSP:

We hope that this top will help you to find the perfect open-source CAD software for your project. If you already have a 3D model, and want to try additive manufacturing, you can upload your 3D model right now on our online 3D printing service. You will access our 3D printers, allowing you to create amazing 3D printing projects.

If you want to read more about 3D modeling software and 3D printing, dont forget to subscribe to our newsletter.

More:
Top 16 of the best open-source CAD software in 2020

What is Open Source Software? Most of us think we already know, but in fact, there are a number of interpretations and nuances to defining Open Source.

This is the first article in a new series that will explain the basics of open source for business advantage and how to achieve it through the discipline of professional open source management. (These materials are excerpted from The Linux Foundation Training course on professional open source management. Download the full sample chapter now.)

Defining Open Source in common terms is the first step for any organization that wants to realize, and optimize, the advantages of using open source software (OSS) in their products or services. So lets start by defining what we mean when we talk about open source.

When people talk about Open Source, they often use the term in a number of different ways. Open Source can be a piece of software that you download for free from the Internet, a type of software license, a community of developers, or even an ideology of access and participation.

Although these are all aspects of the Open Source phenomenon, there is actually a more precise definition:

Open Source Software (OSS) is software distributed under a license that meets certain criteria:

1. It is available in source code form (without charge or at cost)

2. Open Source may be modified and redistributed without additional permission

3. Finally, other criteria may apply to its use and redistribution.

The most widely accepted definition for Open Source Software comes from the Open Source Initiative (OSI). The OSI website also lists a number of licenses that have been reviewed and found compliant with the definition, but there are additionally many licenses currently in

circulation that meet these criteria.

The Free Software Foundation, for its part, prefers the term Free Software and a much simpler definition, but Open Source is compatible with and includes Free Software. Sometimes, these terms are combined as FOSS Free and Open Source Software.

Now, there are also other kinds of downloadable software that are not Open Source, and they must be accounted for. These other types of software include:

Shareware or Free Trialware, which is downloadable software with commercial terms that actually can involve payments under various circumstances

There is also any other software that does not allow free re-distribution as part of another program, like, perhaps, one of your organizations products.

Now that weve established what open source software is in common terms, we can move on to the business case for using open source software. Next week, well discuss how and why OSS can be used for business advantage. And in the following articles, well cover more open source basics including the operational challenges and risks for companies using OSS, common open source management techniques, open source licensing, and more.

Read more:

Using Open Source Software to Speed Development and Gain Business Advantage

6 Reasons Why Open Source Software Lowers Development Costs

The rest is here:
What Is Open Source Software? - The Linux Foundation

Like it? Share it!

If you have ever used Ubuntu or Linux, you probably have some idea about open source software. Here are some examples along with a brief insight into the whats and hows of open source computer software applications.

There are three major types of software Programming Software, Systems Software and Application Software. Of the three, the latter two come in two broad classifications open source and closed source. There are many different types of application software which are open source and most of us regularly download and use them on our PC/laptop, such as VLC. In this Techspirited article, we will take a look at some popular and highly recommended open source software examples for different types of operating systems.

Would you like to write for us? Well, we're looking for good writers who want to spread the word. Get in touch with us and we'll talk...

Let's Work Together!

An open source computer software is either a systems software or an application software that is available freely in the form of source codes and the users are permitted, under the software license, to study, modify and improve the software. The Open Source Initiative has set certain parameters to determine whether a software license renders the software open source or not. These parameters are very specific and are as laid down below. In order to be considered Open Source, a software must qualify on all of these parameters.

VLC, Mozilla Firefox and MySQL are prominent software examples which are open source. Linux and Ubuntu are prominent examples of open source operating systems. Let us browse through some examples for two major operating systems Windows and Mac.

Popular Open Source Software for Windows

Notable Open Source Software for Mac

Most of these open source applications, as you can discern, are equally popular to Mac as well as Windows. The biggest advantages of open source computer software are their ease to penetrate the market without the companies offering them requiring to sweat over promoting them and providing a sense of empowerment and flexibility to users and developers. The greatest disadvantages are argued to be their being in a perennially developmental stage and the ignorance of system testing and documentation. This point of concern may be true in case of very small software projects but holds no water for larger, more successful projects which risk no such negligence and their software are well-defined and subject to rules regarding testing of modifications and documentation. Before downloading though, get thoroughly informed about free software download pros and cons to be on the safer side if you are downloading software from some obscure site.

We all have, sometime or the other, used and benefited from some of the best open source software available on the web. Most of you must be familiar with the aforementioned examples and know some of these to be the best things to have happened to web browsing, instant messaging, pod casting, media playing, photo editing and much more the scopes are unlimited! Download these wicked open source applications and open yourself to more variety and computing convenience. Happy installing!

View post:
Open Source Software Examples - Techspirited

If you think of open source software as being primarily the work of hobbyists and lone developers, your impression is sorely out of date. While independent developers are still an important part of the open source community, today much of the work on open source projects is being done by corporate developers.

In a recent appearance at the Open Source Summit, Linux founder Linus Torvalds acknowledged this corporate influence and welcomed it. "It's very important to have companies in open source," he said. "It's one thing I have been very happy about."

The list below highlights some of the leading for-profit companies that are using, sponsoring and contributing to open source projects. It includes a mix of large enterprises, small startups and everything in between. Some of the companies exclusively offer products based on open source software, while others sell a mix of proprietary and open source solutions. But all of these companies play a significant role in the open source community.

Please note that this is not a ranking; the companies are arranged in alphabetical order. If you think we left off a company that should have been on the list, feel free to make your case in the Comments section below.

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Employees: More than 15,000

Publicly Traded: ADBE (NASDAQ)

Annual Revenue: $5.854 billion

Why It Made the List: Adobe has a strong commitment to open source and has more than 250 public repositories on its GitHub site. Some of its best-known open source projects are developer tools like the PhoneGap web development framework, the Brackets text editor and the Topcoat CSS library. Adobe staff also contribute regularly to other open source projects like Gecko, Blink, WebKit, Apache Cordova, Flex, Felix and many others.

Headquarters: San Francisco, Calif.

Employees: 564

Publicly Traded: No

Annual Revenue: Not available

Why It Made the List: You might not have heard of Automattic before, but you have almost certainly heard of its best-known creation WordPress. According to the website, WordPress currently "powers 28 percent of the Internet." Although the WordPress open source project is now handled by a foundation, Automattic continues to contribute to its code, and it runs WordPress.com. It also participates in many other open source projects like WooCommerce and BuddyPress.

Headquarters: Burlington, Mass.

Employees: More than 320

Publicly Traded: No

Annual Revenue: Not available

Why It Made the List: Unlike most of the other companies on this list, Black Duck is noteworthy not for its own contributions to open source projects but because it makes it easier for other organizations to use open source software. It offers three key projects: Hub for identifying and managing open source software at use in an environment, Protex for ensuring compliance with open source licenses and company policies, and Security Checker for identifying security vulnerabilities in open source software. It boasts more than 2,000 customers, including Intel, Nintendo, SAP and Samsung.

Headquarters: London, UK

Employees: More than 550

Publicly Traded: No

Annual Revenue: $103.3 million

Why It Made the List: This is the company behind Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distributions on the planet. In fact, the company claims that Ubuntu is the worlds most popular operating system across public clouds and OpenStack clouds. Canonicals mission is to make open source software available to people everywhere. We believe the best way to fuel innovation is to give the innovators the technology they need.

Headquarters: Seattle, Wash.

Employees: Less than 500 (est.)

Publicly Traded: No

Annual Revenue: Not available

Why It Made the List: Chef is the name of both an open source systems integration framework and the company that owns that framework. As DevOps has become more widely adopted, Chef has emerged as one of the most popular tools for automating configuration management. In fact one TechCrunch ranking of the most popular open source projects listed Chef as number 23. Staff from the company also contribute to other open source projects, and it has approximately 70 repositories on its public GitHub site.

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Employees: Less than 500 (est.)

Publicly Traded: No

Annual Revenue: Not available

Why It Made the List: Another favorite among DevOps teams, CloudBees is the company behind Jenkins, which was number 14 on that TechCrunch list of popular open source projects. Jenkins is an open source automation server, which means that it helps speed up software development by automating processes like documentation, testing, deployment, and more. The company claims that Jenkins is "the world's most popular pen source automation server, with hundreds of thousands of active installations around the world," and Jenkins staff have written 80 percent of the core Jenkins code.

Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA

Employees: Approx. 1,600

Publicly Traded: CLDR (NYSE)

Annual Revenue: $166.05 million

Why It Made the List: Because it offers one of the most popular supported versions of Hadoop, Cloudera has become increasingly important as the big data trend has taken off. Its chief architect, Doug Cutting, founded Hadoop, and the company says it has contributed more code to the Hadoop ecosystem than anyone else. Its employees have started more than 20 Hadoop-related projects and are very active on Apache Foundation projects.

Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.

Employees: Less than 200 (est.)

Publicly Traded: No

Annual Revenue: Not available

Why It Made the List: A major player in the big data space, Confluent is the company behind Apache Kafka, which was 20th on that list of most popular open source projects. The company describes Kafka as "a distributed streaming platform capable of handling trillions of events a day." It was originally created at LinkedIn (see below) and was released under an open source license in 2011. The team behind the project founded Confluent as an independent company, and today it offers a commercially supported version of the software.

Headquarters: San Francisco, Calif.

Employees: Less than 200 (est.)

Publicly Traded: No

Annual Revenue: Not available

Why It Made the List: Databricks is the company that supports another very popular big data streaming project Apache Spark. The developers that founded the project started Databricks in 2013 to offer commercial support for the effort. According to the company, Spark has the "largest open source community in big data, with over 1,000 contributors from 250+ organizations." Well-known Databricks customers include NBCUniversal, HP, Shell, Cisco, 3M and many others.

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Employees: More than 400

Publicly Traded: No

Annual Revenue: Not available

Why It Made the List: DataStax offers a commercially supported version of the Apache Cassandra NoSQL database, as well as a managed cloud solution also based on Cassandra. It claims more than 500 customers in more than 50 countries. Well-known companies that use its products include Netflix, Safeway, Adobe, Intuit and eBay.

Headquarters: San Francisco, Calif.

Employees: More than 120 (est.)

Publicly Traded: No

Annual Revenue: Not available

Why It Made the List: Over the last few years, the Docker containerization technology has emerged as one of the most influential open source projects for enterprise users. It has more than 32,000 stars on GitHub and has been downloaded more than 8 billion times. The company behind the technology, also named Docker, was listed third on the list of companies with the most GitHub contributors in 2016. The Docker software is very popular with companies using agile and DevOps approaches, and the company claims, "On average companies using Docker experience a 7X improvement in how frequently they are able to ship software."

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

Employees: More than 500

Publicly Traded: No

Annual Revenue: Not available

Why It Made the List: Best known for its open source Elasticsearch project, Elastic offers a complete stack of products designed that can "reliably and securely take data from any source, in any format, and search, analyze, and visualize it in real time." Elasticsearch ranked seventh on the index of popular open source projects, and it has 25,254 stars on GitHub. Elastic also has several other open source projects, including Kibana, Beats and Logstash.

Headquarters: Menlo Park, Calif.

Employees: More than 20,000

Publicly Traded: FB (NASDAQ)

Annual Revenue: $27.638 billion

Why It Made the List: The leading social network has emerged as one of the leading advocates for open source software and hardware. In 2016, it was second on the list of companies with the most GitHub contributors (15,682). Its most popular open source projects include the React and React-native JavaScript development tools, Flow, HHVM, Relay and many others.

Headquarters: San Francisco, Calif.

Employees: 672

Publicly Traded: No

Annual Revenue: Not available

Why It Made the List: GitHub has become the de facto repository for open source projects. In a 2016 report, it boasted more than 5.8 million active users, more than 331,000 active organizations, and more than 19.4 million active repositories. The company has also created several open source projects of its own, including the Atom text editor, Hubot and Git Large File Storage (LFS).

Headquarters: Menlo Park, Calif.

Employees: More than 57,000

Publicly Traded: GOOGL and GOOG (NASDAQ)

Annual Revenue: $89.5 Billion

Why It Made the List: Having released or contributed to more than 2,000 open source projects, Google is one of the most ardent corporate users and supporters of open source. It was fifth on the list of companies that had the most GitHub contributors in 2016 (and it also owns Angular, which was fourth on the list.) Well-known Google open source projects include Android, Chromium, Dart, Go, Kubernetes, TensorFlow and many others.

Headquarters: San Francisco, Calif.

Employees: Less than 50 (est.)

Publicly Traded: No

Annual Revenue: Not available

Why It Made the List: Gradle is the name of an open source Devops build tool and the company that maintains it. It was listed as number 17 on the TechCrunch list of top open source projects and claims more than 4 million downloads every month. Its users include many of the companies on this list, such as LinkedIn, Android, Netflix, Adobe and Elastic.

Headquarters: San Francisco, Calif.

Employees: Less than 250 (est.)

Publicly Traded: No

Annual Revenue: Not available

Why It Made the List: Another DevOps tools vendor, Hashicorp has created several open source projects, most of which are related to cloud infrastructure automation. The most notable of its projects is the Vagrant configuration tool, which was ranked as the 15th top open source project in existence. Its other open source efforts include Packer, Terraform, Vault, Consul and Nomad.

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Employees: 1,110 (est.)

Publicly Traded: HDP (NASDAQ)

Annual Revenue: $184.5 million

Why It Made the List: Like Cloudera, Hortonworks offers an extremely popular distribution of Hadoop, which was 6th on the list of top open source projects and is nearly synonymous with big data. The company says it believes "in a 100% open approach for everything. We reject outright the notion that vendors only succeed through lock-in and proprietary technologies. We believe that open source spurs innovation."

Headquarters: Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

Employees: Approx. 180,000

Publicly Traded: No

Annual Revenue: $75.103 billion

Why It Made the List: This Chinese technology firm might not be the first that most people think of when it comes to open source development, but in recent years it has been contributing heavily to Linux. In The Linux Foundation's 2017 report on kernel development, Huawei was ranked 25th among companies contributing changes to the operating system and fourth among companies that were "most active in bringing new developers into the community."

Headquarters: Armonk, N.Y.

Continue reading here:
35 Top Open Source Companies - Datamation

Overview & Approach

HHS is actively using and repurposing free open source software and collaborating with interagency and intra-agency partners given the numerous benefits associated with the shared approach. Consistent with the Federal Source Code Policy, usage of open source software can fuel innovation, lower costs, and benefit the public. The federal Policy is designed to support improved access to custom software code developed for the Federal government. Furthermore, open source software can support the Digital Government Strategy's "Shared Platform" approach, which enables Federal employees to work together-both within and across agencies to reduce costs, streamline development, apply uniform standards, and ensure consistency in creating and delivering information.

Using FOSS allows for product customization, advances interoperability between tools, and improves the overall quality of the final product. This creates real economic value by lowering the burden of replicating similar work or by allowing the private sector to build off of and create new businesses around previously-developed code. The 2014 passage of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) created an opportunity to significant policy and administrative reform, including the requirement that each agency have a software asset and management plan. While much of the software asset and management plan focuses on category management and acquisition of software licenses, the implementation of FITARA also provides agencies with an opportunity to bolster their use of free open source software, include it within the software asset and management plan for greater transparency, and share it throughout the agency to illustrate the value of free open source software when compared with expensive software licensing and potential vendor lock-in.

The HHS CIOs office, as well as other agency divisions, has been conducting asset analysis and is creating and planning to share a listing of available contracts with agency leaders. To the extent practicable, this creates yet another opportunity to break down the silos by centralizing active, upcoming, or discarded open source software projects and coding in order for HHS and other agencies to identify, collaborate, or piggyback off of existing projects to lower costs and maximize savings to taxpayers.

There is currently no mechanism in place for broadly sharing code among Federal Agencies exclusively, though some of the source code repositories shared publicly are meant to be more beneficial to other Federal Agencies than to the public at large. For example, the source code repository named ckanext-datajson in the HHS collection is meant to help other Federal Agencies meet expectations of the Open Data Initiative by providing an extension to the open source CKAN application that many Federal Agencies use to catalog the datasets they make publicly-accessible.

Location and Examples of Publicly-accessible Code

Various organizations within HHS have openly shared code on the GitHub website, popular among open source projects. The repositories of source code made available to the public can be easily viewed by visiting the website locations anonymously, (i.e. without logging in to a GitHub account).

The two most popular locations where HHS publishes source code on GitHub are https://github.com/HHS and https://github.com/HHSIDEALab. A smaller number of source code repositories shared publicly by HHS can be found at https://github.com/FDA and https://github.com/AHRQ. Open FDA is another popular resource for developers and researchers, who will have easy access to high-value FDA public data through RESTful APIs and structured file downloads. In short, our goal is to make it simple for an application, mobile, or web developer, or all stripes of researchers, to use data from FDA in their work.

Weve done an extensive amount of research both internally and with potential external developers to identify which datasets are both in demand and have a high barrier of entry. As a result, our initial pilot project will cover a number of datasets from various areas within FDA, defined into three broad focus areas: Adverse Events, Product Recalls, and Product Labeling. These APIs wont have one-on-one matching to FDAs internal data organizational structure; rather, we intend to abstract on top of a myriad of datasets and provide appropriate metadata and identifiers when possible. Of course, well always make the raw source data available for people who prefer to work that way (and its good to mention that we also will not be releasing any data that could potentially be used to identify individuals or other private information).

Pillbox is one of the largest free databases of prescription and over-the-counter drug information and images, combining data from pharmaceutical companies, Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and Department of Veterans Affairs. Pillbox for Developers is a resource for getting open access to the data processing code, understanding the methodology, and contributing to the project.

TurboTax, in conjunction with HHS, has released Benefit Assist, a new open source software tool to help feed more Americans. Americans who dont have enough money for food, approximately one in six Americans, will have an easier time finding out if they are eligible and applying for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)/Food Stamps with the release of Intuit TurboTax Benefits Assist as free and open source software and with the software code freely available as hosted by The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services at the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) following collaboration with New York City Council Member Ben Kallos. States that currently must administer SNAP will be able to save money by using Benefits Assist and can collectively build upon it to reduce overhead and save our nation billions.

Intuits TurboTax launched Benefit Assist in 2015, offering to screen 30.7 million Americans who file taxes with TurboTax an opportunity to learn if they are eligible for SNAP and even submit an application using tax information they had already entered. In 2016, Benefit Assist was expanded to include Federal Communications Commissions Lifeline free mobile phone service. Now in an effort to see even more Americans served Intuit is releasing the source code for its Benefit Assist search, rules engine, as well as benefit rules and definitions using the free and open source GNU Affero General Public License so that anyone whether state government, non-profit or a developer can freely use, share and improve upon Benefit Assist to fight hunger.

President Barack Obama has laid the groundwork to streamline access to nutrition, home energy, cash assistance, and other human services necessary to stay healthy facilitated by integrating eligibility and enrollment with Medicaid and CHIP at the state-level through the Affordable Care Act, Executive Order 13563, Executive Memorandum, waivers, and guidance. Enhanced federal funding is available through 2018 for each state to integrate, interoperate, and improve the delivery of federally assisted benefits to their residents by leveraging information sharing across health and human service agencies to automatically recertify or provide benefits.

In order to expand access to government human service benefits and in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundations State Health Reform Assistance Network the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services at HHS Idea Lab, have developed a free and open source tool that States can use to facilitate Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) eligibility determination for Medicaid and CHIP called MAGI in the Cloud, freely available on GitHub. The free and open source software is now operated and maintained by the New England State Consortium Systems Organization (NESCO) and in use by the District of Columbia, New Jersey, North Dakota and Tennessee. The Benefit Assist tools source code will be freely available alongside MAGI in the Cloud available at https://github.com/HHSIDEAlab. The HHS Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) has been working on a comprehensive project to modernize their systems, switching from the use of legacy systems to open source software. This multi-year project involves a complete analysis, redesign, migration, implementation, and maintenance of a new web content management system (WCMS) as well as a public-facing website, intranet, and two legacy databases as well as hosting and marketing. The HHS Office on Womens Health (OWH) recently awarded a new contract to modernize an aging online data query system, which will only use free open source software, including robust mapping tools that take advantage of modern web geographic information system (GIS) technology and Open Geospatial Consortium standards. The new, interactive online data query system will feature a user-friendly computer interface for queries that actively accesses and ingests data from a variety of sources using machine readable outputs, such as APIs.

Approach to Collaboration, More Broad Usage, Centralization of, and Publicly-available Free Open Source Software Code

HHS, like many other agencies, continues to make better use of open source software in developing or redeveloping aging legacy systems while finding collaborative, innovative ways to share these efforts and successful outcomes throughout the federal government as well as the public at-large.

HHS actively collaborates on various projects with digital and open source software leaders, including the U.S. Digital Service and GSAs 18F. 18F has recently rolled out Cloud.gov, an open source Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution, which will further enhance HHS ability to embrace and share more open source software tools.

Continue reading here:
3.14 Open Source Software | HHS.gov

Brief: If you are looking for free and open source software, here are some websites from where you can download free software.

Where can I download open source software?

I have been asked this question several times and I usually have the same answer. So I thought instead of replying to individual emails, I would put a list of sources in an article so other people can also benefit from it.

You can always find software in the software center of your Linux distributions, the description usually specify whether or not it is open source. Of course, project websites also distribute the software. But apart from them, if you are in browsing mode and just looking for interesting softwares to download, there are several websites that list and host open source software.

Some websites provide a way to effectively collaborate for open source software development but that is not our focus here. Well be focusing on web-portals that host and distribute open source projects.

Just to clarify, the list is not in any specific order. So, here we go with the list of websites that host or list open source software. Feel free to bookmark them.

SourceForge is one of the earliest portals to host and distribute open source software.Over the years, SourceForge has become one of the premierresourcesforopen source projects.

SourceForge boasts of hosting over 500,000 projects and has millions of registered users. It sees over 4 million downloads a day from over 30 million monthly users.

You can find featured open source projects on its homepage along with editors choice projects. You can also browse software in various categories. A search option is available too.

SourceForge also provides stats on downloads so you can see if the project is popular or not. The project page also shows which operating system is supported and which license is used.

Registered members can also rate and review software, similar to what you see on Play Store and App Store.

SourceForge ran into controversy in 2013-14 when it tried to monetize the downloads with adware. Thankfully, it is now owned by Slashdot Media and its president Logan Abbott has ensured that the software remains free from ads.

Logan has also indicated that there will be a redesign of the website soon giving it a more modern look and making it more user-friendly.

OSDN stands for Open Source Development Network. It provides a bunch of free-of-charge services for open source software developers. These services include SVN/Git/Mercurial/Bazaar/CVS repositories, mailing lists, bug tracking system, bulletin board and forum, website hosting, release file download service, file archive, complete backup, shell environment etc.

Over 55,000 projects use OSDN services. Even big names like Manjaro Linux host their project on OSDN.

As and end user, you can use OSDN for finding and downloading open source software. Their download page has a list of software categories you can browse through and download.

FossHubwas founded in 2007 with the goal of becoming reliable place for users who wish to download their favorite software titles and as a trustworthy partner for certain free projects.

It provides fast worldwide servers and optimized pages for a fast load and download of open source software. They have only direct download links so no further redirection or waiting time there.

Project page lists the total number of downloads. It also shows the supported operating systems.

You can also rate and review the software, even if you are not a registered member.

Just to be clear, FossHub also hosts selected few closed-source freeware. This may confuse some people as they might expect FossHub to host only free and open source software.

It would be better if they clearly mention on each project page if the concerned software is FOSS or not.

GitHub is slightly different from the two discussed above. GitHub is more focused on hosting source code and project development. But it is also extensively used for distributing software.

Projects can make their own web pages on GitHub and can provide the direct download from it. Software can also be downloaded directly from the main repository.

As an end user, you wont find GitHub very friendly for browsing software and downloading it. But if you are a developer, GitHub is heaven for you.

F-Droid is a platform to list and distribute free and open source software for Android.

You can browse FOSS Android apps in various categories. You can also download the APK files directly from the website but it is recommended to use F-Droid client for installing the apps.

With F-Droid client, your installed Android app will get updates. If you directly use the APK, it wont get updates and thus will pose a security risk.

You can visit their website below:

I would like to mentionSavannah from GNU for downloading free and open source software here. Its an old-school website from FSF that I dont find very user-friendly. However, you can be sure to get 100 percent free and open source software here.

alternativeTo is also a good place to find open source alternative software recommendations. You can filter by platform and licenses to ensure that you are getting the appropriate recommendation. However, it doesnt host the projects itself.

Now, this list may not be exhaustive and you might know of some other such websites that host and distribute open source software. If so, please mention them in the comment section below and help me improve this list of websites to download open source software?

Like what you read? Please share it with others.

See the original post here:
5 Reliable Websites for Downloading Free and Open Source ...

Open source grew, it proliferated and it became something that many previously proprietary-only software vendors embraced as a key means of development but the issue of how open source software is licenced is still the stuff of some debate.

The Computer Weekly Open Source Insider team now features a series of guest posts examing in the ups & downs and ins & out of open source software licencing.

Technical Consultant, Sarah Bateman at financial services software company Altus writes from this point forward.

The idea that open source developers are college students, creating some really cool software that big organisations then exploit and dont give anything back may have been valid 20 years ago, but not today, its not how things work.

Open source is now big, with major players driving innovation, like the OpenBank Project, the Banking API platform and OpenLogic.

For a working example, AT&T is (obviously) a household name and very large quoted business. The organisation provides the majority of engineering, design and architectural resource for the ONAP open source project.

ONAP is a network virtualisation orchestration product used in the telco world, big telcos use this tool to meet their fluctuating network capacity requirements and to provide new services.

These companies will make a lot of money through using ONAP, a piece of open source software.

Are these telcos exploiting poor little AT&T? AT&T is neither poor nor little, it is doing this for a whole raft of sound commercial reasons: it gives the company control of the market, technical profile (kudos) and most importantly allows it to strongly influence the future direction of a key technology and how it is used.

In the insurance world we have OpenUnderwriter, an insurance distribution tool and Lemonade, the Home Insuretech company is debuting an open source insurance policy that it says all users can help shape.

In these examples open source is used to drive take-up and help cross borders. Lemonade specifically see the move both ways, to increase innovation with a large pool of contributors and increased customers through the improved perception of openness and trust in an industry that can be seen very much as a black box.

These motivations will be common for many of the open source development solutions out there, a lone person developing code for the betterment of humanity is no longer the norm. Its businesses deciding they want to develop software, software that is, on the surface free, but may result in revenue, for example through consultancy, it raises their profile, makes them look good and enables them to get really good talent to work for them.

If we take a look at insurance, it should be remembered that it is a high volume, small margin business; companies setting themselves up as a tech business on the other hand, will enable them to get a higher multiplier for any planned IPO and founder exit.

To think these organisations, or any software company using open source software, are exploiting the open source providers and they should be giving back to the community, is a misunderstanding of that community.

I would argue that a lot of companies do feedback changes, look at the thriving Drupal community, thriving due to contributions from developers working for web companies; employing a Drupal master gives a web agency credibility.

Therefore, I believe, its a nave perspective to think of an open source community as being vulnerable, creative types being exploited by big business.

Altus Bateman: dont hold nave perspectives about open source.

Continued here:
Open source licence series - Altus: open source is big business, get used to it - ComputerWeekly.com

Less than five years after it launched, cybersecurity company Snyk (which is pronounced "sneak" and stands for "so now you know") is valued at over $1 billion.

Today, many companies' applications are underpinned by open source software, or software that is free for anyone to use, download, and modify. Snyk builds tools that automatically scans the open source software to find and fix vulnerabilities.

On Tuesday, Snyk announced it raised $150 million in a round led by Stripes, just four months after it announced it closed a $70 million round in September. In total, Snyk has raised $250 million.

Snyk wasn't looking to raise money. The raise was prompted by VCs who wanted to invest proactively, says Snyk CEO Peter McKay.

Since the last round, McKay says that Snyk's annual recurring revenue has doubled. And from 2018 to 2019, its ARR has quadrupled as it won big customers like Google, Salesforce, Intuit, and Nordstrom.

"Our investors see that as a huge opportunity," McKay told Business Insider. "They see our momentum both in the community and customer traction and just the awareness on Snyk in the market."

McKay says Snyk has been able to double its ARR in the last four months because it works from the bottom up, by creating a community of developers who bring its software in-house to help them perform their jobs.

While Snyk helps make open source software more secure, its tools are not themselves free and open source, although the company's got a try-it-before-you buy it freemium tier. The interesting thing about Snyk is that it breaks the misconception that developers who are comfortable with free open-source software, or just whipping together a tool themselves aren't willing to pay for software tools. (That's one of the reasons Snyk was named by VCs as one of the 72 startups that will boom in 2020.)

"A lot of that has been driven from an aggressive shift, and more power, shifting to developers, not just in tech companies but all companies," McKay said. "The speed of your developing organization and the number of apps that you're building for your customers have increased significantly yet cybersecurity continues to be a big issue for all of them."

In fact, Snyk is doubling down on its plans to grow its community of users. It has a team that focuses on building its community and sharing information about security with them and McKay says the company hopes its education efforts will reach every developer worldwide.

Last June, Snyk acquired DevSecCon, a conference focused on development and security. Snyk says that this conference will become a big vehicle for it to build an even bigger developer community around its products and educate them about security.

Still, McKay says Snyk treats its business and community as two separate companies, as what's right for the business can be different from what's right for the community. On the community side, Snyk focuses on raising more awareness on security, compliance, and data protection, as well as providing developers access to the freemium version of its software.

For enterprise customers, Snyk focuses on building business features to help large teams collaborate better.

"As more and more of these companies move aggressively to digital first and become more and more of a software company, the importance of software and the increase in software risk is becoming significant," McKay said. "The only way to solve that problem in a way that doesn't slow you down, you've got to build it in the development lifecycle."

McKay says a big part of why VCs invested in his company was because it's been fiscally responsible and spends money prudently. He says Snyk still has most of the money from the last round in the bank.

"We spend it the right way, the right time, all the right metrics we're focused on," McKay said. "We don't want to lose the quality of the teams we hire, and don't want to lose maniacal focus on customer success. It's growing at a controlled pace."

Although McKay says Snyk didn't need to raise new funding, it saw this round as an opportunity to reach even larger goals. With the funding, Snyk plans to focus on building its products, expanding globally, and continuing to grow its community of over 400,000 developers.

"When you look at it, we thought this would be a way to expand our product roadmap faster," McKay said. "This would be a way to expand our community globally. This would be a way for us to expand our go-to-market at a faster pace then we were. The time is now and the market opportunity is there."

Now that Snyk's valuation has reached over a billion, McKay says its goal is to run its business like a public company.

"An acquisition could come out of anywhere, you never say never, but we don't plan on that. We focus on being a long term successful software company where you get to a point where you have the option of being public," McKay said.

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at rmchan@businessinsider.com, Signal at 646.376.6106,Telegram at @rosaliechan, orTwitter DM at @rosaliechan17. (PR pitches by email only, please.) Other types of secure messaging available upon request. Youcan alsocontact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

The rest is here:
The CEO of open source cybersecurity startup Snyk, which is now valued at over $1 billion in less than five years, explains how it doubled its revenue...

Alfresco Software, an open source content, process and governance software company, and Tech Mahindra, a leading provider of digital transformation, consulting and re-engineering services and solutions, today announced collaboration on four jointly-developed, transformative insurance solutions. The collaboration combines Tech Mahindras insurance expertise and experience in the insurance industry with Alfrescos powerful Digital Business Platform to create solutions for risk management, automated underwriting, a self-learning chatbot, and intelligent claims handling.

Gautam Bhasin, Global Head - Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), Tech Mahindra, said: "Insurance companies are constantly competing for new digital-native customers in order to gain more customers and create new revenue streams. To succeed, they have to reinvent their current offerings and offer modern solutions that appeal to both insurance policy holders and providers. Tech Mahindras collaboration with Alfresco, as part of our TechMNxt charter, has spawned four innovative applications that help insurance companies develop new products, optimize their current offerings, and provide customers with an enhanced experience."

Dineshkumar Shankarnarayan, Head Digital Experience Offerings, Tech Mahindra said: "Alfrescos cloud capabilities and digital business platform is synergistic with Tech Mahindras overall mission of serving the Digital Customer. Todays announcement represents the expansion of our partnership to bring innovative digital solutions for Insurance companies. We consider Alfresco to be one of our key partners in helping our customers transition seamlessly to cloud-based service by making applications more usable and enhancing their overall user experience."

Using the Alfresco Digital Business Platform as the cloud-native content management foundation (see IDC Technology spotlight: "Achieving Contextual and Value-Centric Customer Engagement in Insurance Through Connected Ecosystems"), Tech Mahindra is targeting insurance companies with the following four solutions that can help them reshape their operations and enable them to better serve their customers:

Jay Bhatt, Chief Executive Officer, Alfresco noted: "The transformative power of our advanced content, process, and governance platform enables insurance providers to achieve the full benefits of digitalization with real-time access to content wherever it resides and agile workflow development. This, in turn, will enable them to operate more efficiently, offer new services, stimulate growth, and decrease customer churn by helping their customers find the coverage most applicable and appealing to them."

About Tech Mahindra

Tech Mahindra represents the connected world, offering innovative and customer-centric information technology experiences, enabling Enterprises, Associates and the Society to Rise. We are a USD 4.9 billion company with 131,500+ professionals across 90 countries, helping 946 global customers including Fortune 500 companies. Our convergent, digital, design experiences, innovation platforms and reusable assets connect across a number of technologies to deliver tangible business value and experiences to our stakeholders. Tech Mahindra is the highest ranked Non-U.S. company in the Forbes Global Digital 100 list (2018) and in the Forbes Fab 50 companies in Asia (2018).

Tech Mahindra is part of the USD 21 billion Mahindra Group that employs more than 200,000 people in over 100 countries. The Group operates in the key industries that drive economic growth, enjoying a leadership position in tractors, utility vehicles, after-market, information technology and vacation ownership. Connect with us on http://www.techmahindra.com

About Alfresco

Alfresco Software, Inc. ("Alfresco") is a commercial, open source software company that builds and markets a cloud-native, process, content and governance intensive Digital Business Platform. It is a single, integrated platform built from the ground up by Alfresco and is used to digitize processes, manage content and securely govern information. Alfresco is used by more than 1,300 industry-leading organizations, including Cisco, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Delta Dental, Liberty Mutual, LexisNexis, Pitney Bowes, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NASA, RBC Capital Markets and the US Navy Department. Founded in 2005, Alfresco has its headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts, USA and operations in Atlanta, GA., Maidenhead and London, UK, and Sydney, Australia. For more information about Alfresco, please visit http://www.alfresco.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200127005029/en/

Contacts

Sara KrypelAlfrescoUS@teamlewis.com 781-418-2422

For more information on Tech Mahindra, please contact:

More here:
Alfresco and Tech Mahindra Introduce Four Jointly Developed AI/IoT Solutions for Insurance Companies - Yahoo Finance