Perhaps you know SolarWinds as one of the market’s leading IT observability and monitoring vendors, so it’ll be no surprise to you that we are very engaged with the OpenTelemetry community (OTel),a bedrock technology in the observability domain.

I was surprised, however, by the number of responses I’d received requesting more information about what other OSS communities are prominent and widely used in enterprise IT. So, let’s take a closer look at the large umbrella groups that actively sponsor, create, and disseminate OSS products and applications.

A Broad View of the OSS Landscape

The following list is by no means a comprehensive and complete list of the variety of open-source and open-standards umbrella groups that strive to make the world of IT better. However, the following are some of the best-known and most popular OSS communities with a multi-national perspective. There are also many excellent OSS organizations that are scoped to a single industry, area of scientific study, or nation. Here’s my top list of OSS organizations along with their core focus, number of active projects, and top two offerings:

The Linux Foundation, founded in 2000

  • Core Focus: Supporting the development of open-source software across a variety of industries.
  • Number of Active Projects: Nearly 1,000.
  • Top offerings are Linux, the world’s most widely used open-source operating system, and Kubernetes, a leading container orchestration platform, co-founded in 2015 along with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which also sponsors the OpenTelemetry (OTel) project.

Apache Software Foundation (ASF), founded in 1999

  • Core Focus: Providing support for a wide range of open-source software projects.
  • Number of Active Projects: Over 350.
  • Top offerings are Apache HTTP Server and Apache Hadoop, a framework for distributed storage and processing large data sets.

Free Software Foundation (FSF), founded in 1985

  • Core Focus: Promoting the use and development of free software and against the use of proprietary software and formats. It maintains and legally enforces the GNU General Public License. It also created the Free Software Definition.
  • Number of Active Projects: Smaller in number but highly influential.
  • Top offerings are the GNU Project, a collection of free software, including the GNU operating system, and GCC (GNU Compiler Collection).

Open Source Initiative (OSI), founded in 1985

  • Core Focus: Keepers of the Open Source Definition (OSD) document, the most commonly applied standard that defines open-source software. They define and promote open-source software from a pragmatic rather than moral perspective.
  • Number of Active Projects: Focuses on certification and advocacy rather than hosting projects.
  • Top offerings are the Open-Source Definition, the defining criteria for open-source licenses, and License Review Process, which provides Certification of licenses as OSI-approved.

Eclipse Foundation, founded in 2001

  • Core Focus: Supporting the development of open-source software for various industries through a variety of tools, frameworks, and extensions for the Eclipse IDE.
  • Number of Active Projects: Over 415.
  • Top offerings are Eclipse IDE, an integrated development environment for Java developers, and Jakarta EE.

Mozilla Foundation, founded in 2003

  • Core Focus: Promoting an open and accessible internet aimed at enhancing internet health and user privacy. Mozilla also funds a large number of fellowships, grants, events, and awards.
  • Number of Active Projects: Smaller in number but highly impactful.
  • Top offerings are Firefox, a popular open-source web browser, and Rust, a programming language focused on safety and performance.

These organizations play a crucial role in fostering collaboration, innovation, and the development of open-source software and standards.

Honorable Mentions in Open Source

So now that we’ve covered the very biggest organizations of the OSS landscape, let’s take a quick look with brief details about some of the other bright stars of OSS.

  • GNOME Foundation: Founded in 2000 to coordinate the efforts of the GNOME Project, including GNOME.
  • KDE e.V.: Founded in 1997 to coordinate the efforts of KDE Projects, including KDE and many other software tools.
  • OASIS Open: Founded in 1993 to provide foundation-quality support along with license management, governance, and outreach for OSS creators.
  • OpenInfra Foundation: Founded in 2012 as the OpenStack Foundation with the intent to develop and support open-source infrastructure projects, including OpenStack.
  • Software Freedom Conservancy: Founded in 2006 and hosting around 40 projects, among the most famous of which are Git and Wine.
  • Software in the Public Interest (SPI): Founded in 1997, originally only for the Debian project, SPI now hosts around 35 projects, some of which are umbrella projects themselves. A popular product sponsored by SPI is LibreOffice, a popular alternative to the Microsoft Office suite of products, and PostgreSQL, my personal favorite among OSS relational databases.
  • Open Source Software Institute (OSSI): Founded in 2000 by the US Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. OSSI promotes the use of open-source software in the United States within government at all levels. As a sidenote, the NASA Open Source Software webpage is your portal to all things OSS at NASA.

Get Involved with OSS

Are you a Dev looking to burnish your CV or resume? Then get involved with one (or more) of the organizations above to advance one of the OSS projects that you’re passionate about. The OSS community is a welcoming space where it’s easy to get involved, not only as a developer but also as a technical writer, translator, and product manager. Why not get involved? A great place to start when looking for beginner-friendly OSS projects is the Apache Foundation’s Newcomer’s Guide at Apache Community Development - Getting started.

Tags:
open source
oss