
Most open-source software is libraries or frameworks - bhjs2
https://medium.com/@aserg.ufmg/most-popular-application-domains-on-github-4af418b77a5e
======
SwellJoe
This is a weird premise. It's github. Of _course_ it is predominantly tools
for coders. End user applications have wholly separate paths to the user. An
application could have a handful of contributors/stars/downloads etc. on
github and still have millions of downloads somewhere else (a project I work
on fits that description). And, it might not be on github at all and still be
used by millions daily.

I guarantee openssh, Firefox, LibreOffice, and probably a hundred other
applications, are (orders of magnitude) more popular than the top applications
on this list.

So, if this were titled, "Most open source software on github..." I wouldn't
object. But, I have to completely reject the premise here, because I know that
there's an entire iceberg of OSS software, including applications, that is
completely excluded from the listing by virtue of either not being on github
or being on github, but not using github as its primary method of distribution
and promotion, and this data completely ignores everything below the surface.

Also, it's probably dangerous to begin to think of "Open Source Software" as
only being "Software that has a public github repo".

~~~
jsgo
Honestly though, I don't think that's far off in that even those you mentioned
are leveraged as a library (Firefox maybe not, not sure. Chrome can be used
headless so guessing there's a possibility for Firefox. Some of the open
source internals are used in other projects though). But OpenSSH for sure is
used within other software. Okay, maybe libreoffice isn't a case (at least I
don't think it is).

At this point, I just love seeing GUI software I leverage also coming with a
CLI. I learn what it can do for me with the GUI and then can use the CLI to
manage the heavy lifting for me.

~~~
jcelerier
> At this point, I just love seeing GUI software I leverage also coming with a
> CLI.

I really wonder what is the point of a CLI for, say, Krita or LibreOffice.

~~~
SwellJoe
GIMP has Script Fu (and a newer Python interface) which has been used for
wonderfully time-saving things (e.g. process a thousand images with the same
plugins and settings and such, implement your own custom processing tools by
combining existing ones, etc.)

I'm sure the same sorts of things can be done with Krita, though I'm not
familiar with it.

As for LibreOffice, that seems obvious. An easy/automated way to get data into
and out of it for processing in other programs. An automated way to process
lots of documents that need to stay in LibreOffice but need the same change
performed on them (currency conversion, date format normalization, copyright
update, etc.).

It's the same reason you'd want anything to be programmable: Automating away
the tedious stuff.

~~~
jcelerier
> GIMP has Script Fu (and a newer Python interface) which has been used for
> wonderfully time-saving things (e.g. process a thousand images with the same
> plugins and settings and such, implement your own custom processing tools by
> combining existing ones, etc.)

Begin scriptable and having a CLI are two orthogonal concepts. With Script FU,
GIMP itself executes scripts. If gimp had a CLI it means that you could be
able to do stuff like "gimp --select-pen 2px solid black --moveTo 0 0 --lineTo
100 100 --lineTo 50 50" for instance (for which I don't see the point of using
GIMP to do).

~~~
sqeaky
Now you are picking on minor wording choices. You asked for clarification and
when it was provided you start beating up the person who responded with
meaningful content.

------
fermigier
1) Title is misleading, should have been "Most popular projects on GitHub are
...".

2) Judging from the top-5 list in the post, between 1/4 and 1/3 of the
projects have been miscategorized.

Ex:

\-
[https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11](https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11)
-> should have been categorized as "Application", not "Documentation".

\-
[https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow)
-> should have been "Library", not "Tool".

\- Electron, Socket.io, Moment, lodash... are "Web libraries", not "Non-web
libraries"

and probably more.

I hope the reviewers catch these errors before they publish this in a research
journal.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Moment / Lodash are JS utility libraries for both browser and server-side
runtimes.

~~~
majewsky
But even then, it just goes to show that a classification into "web" and "non-
web" libs is fundamentally flawed. Maybe they want "JS" vs. "non-JS".

------
cobbzilla
Remove the words "open source" and the title makes more sense to me.

Most _software_ is libraries and frameworks -- you just don't get to see
most/all of the proprietary stuff, since it's not on github or anywhere else.

------
sigjuice
The original title is misleading. It should say _Most GitHub projects are
libraries or frameworks_. It is quite a leap to go from _60% GitHub projects_
to _most open source software_.

------
asragab
I am not necessarily surprised by the results.

It is worth noting that the second most popular "software tool" tucked in
between oh-my-zsh and homebrew (both command-line tools/packages) is
Tensorflow.

That has to say something about the current state of the industry, though
admittedly, I am a little confused as to why it was classified as a "software
tool" and not say, "a non-web library or framework."

~~~
droidist2
I think a lot of people star Tensorflow and then never look at it again
though.

~~~
matt4077
In the last week, Tensorflow hat 59 new issues files. That seems to be #1
among those on these lists by a large margin. Second place is electron with 29
(only a bit more than half as much). After that it's react and Atom with 10
each.

That seems to indicate that tensorflow is getting plenty of use.

~~~
majewsky
It might also indicate that it's just moving fast, so a lot of things break.
It might also indicate that people are using the issue tracker as a support
forum. I don't know. But by itself, the "new issues per week" metric is
utterly meaningless.

For example, I would guess that SQLite does not get more than 59 new
bugreports per week, even though SQLite most definitely is much more widely
used than TF.

------
CiPHPerCoder
Interestingly, I looked through their entire CSV and was surprised to find one
of my projects in their 5000 most popular set. Unfortunately, it was a reading
list (awesome-appsec), not an actual software project. But still, kind of
neat.

~~~
acemarke
Huh. After seeing you mention this, I took a look at the spreadsheet and was
actually surprised to _not_ see my "React/Redux Links" repo (
[https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-
links](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links) ) in the list. The
dataset info page says they captured it as of sometime in January 2017. My
repo should have had somewhere around 6000-ish stars at that point, but it's
not included. Wonder why not.

In the meantime, I'm very pleased to note that my list will hit 10K stars
within the next few days :) Based on that spreadsheet, I guess that would put
it somewhere in the top 350 or 400 repos on GH.

Meaningless "Imaginary Internet Points", of course, but amusing to look at
nonetheless :)

------
ivanbakel
Very surprised by the ubiquity of JS in non-web libraries/frameworks. I know
it's a well-played fiddle, but it's saying something damning about our ability
to put together quick and easy applications with other languages - or maybe
just the number of people who start with webdev - when JS becomes the first
choice. Is it just a consequence of how much UI work has been put into HTML
rendering engines?

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Also consider how beneficial it is from an employer's perspective to just
force all UI to be HTML/JS, impedance mismatches be damned.

Edit: another consideration is if HTML/JS is the standard UI, then it biases
that generation of developers to favor that particular abstraction. Innovation
is framed as, "look where we managed to cram HTML/JS!" Actual innovation,
which would be more along the lines of, "here's a new paradigm/abstraction
that replaces HTML/JS" is seen as eccentric and largely ignored. In effect,
developers' over-attachment to the way things are done greatly slows forward
progress. They're only able to recognize small, incremental improvements.

~~~
voltagex_
Big bang improvements are how you get systemd. Isn't incremental improvement
the core of Agile and hence all-the-rage?

~~~
watwut
Systemd got adopted a lot despite being hated.

------
nickpsecurity
Counterpoint: most proprietary apps are probably CRUD apps or spreadsheet
stuff. There's still a lot of good, proprietary apps. Likewise for FOSS. Turns
out the quick and easy solutions to common problems that please project owners
happen more often than solutions to hard problems or things without immediate
ROI. It says more about people's priorities than proprietary or FOSS software.

------
johannes1234321
What else should be top? - Applications and tools use libraries or are split
up into library components ... if there were many more applications than
libraries there would be a lot of NIH ...

~~~
dankohn1
A decade ago many of us thought that open source applications like LibreOffice
and Thunderbird would dominate. Instead, open source seems to be winning
everywhere in infrastructure and libraries, as companies don't want to lock
into proprietary middleware anymore like Weblogic or VMware. But many (most?)
applications are now web-based and closed source (e.g., Google Docs,
Salesforce, Gmail, etc.).

One critique: GitHub stars are not the best indication of interest and can be
gamed. Instead, I prefer using commits, issues and unique authors as a better
metric of project velocity: [https://www.cncf.io/blog/2017/06/05/30-highest-
velocity-open...](https://www.cncf.io/blog/2017/06/05/30-highest-velocity-
open-source-projects/)

------
profpandit
Open source is associated with philanthropy and with being really smart. If
you're a really smart coder, out to change thw world, you'll obviously build a
library or framework to help the other, not so fortunate coders around you as
a way to bring relief from the tyranny of the big monopolistic corporates
(read Microsoft). It's your David changing the evil ways of their Goliath.

------
bigbugbag
> Most open source software is libraries or frameworks

 _Out of the 5000 most popular repositories of github_ , most are libraries or
frameworks.

The author is not bad at clickbait.

 _edit_ I wonder if they actually checked if those 5000 licences are actually
compatible with the open source definition[1].

[1]: [https://opensource.org/osd](https://opensource.org/osd)

------
jcelerier
How many of the software in Debian or any other big distro repo is actually
being developed on github though ?

------
skewart
Is it really accurate to call socket.io a "non-web" library? Even lodash is
questionable in that category - while not strictly tied to the web, it is
primarily used in web apps. I'd be curious to see lower level stuff and/or
stuff further removed from the web in the non-web category.

~~~
garysieling
I write a lot of ETL scripts in Node for
[https://www.findlectures.com](https://www.findlectures.com) use lodash in
pretty much everything, for me it basically serves the role of collections
libraries in other languages

~~~
aargh_aargh
Neat site. Linking the related HN discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14484549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14484549)

------
conceptme
But every piece of software can use hundreds or thousands of libraries.

------
slaymaker1907
Why is lodash considered non-web?

~~~
watwut
Why would it be considered Web? It is use pretty much anywhere where js is
used.

~~~
Scarblac
And that's overwhelmingly on the Web.

~~~
watwut
But people still use it in general libraries that simply count something.
Unlike angular or react which makes zero sense in non Web environment.

