Finding Open Source Rails Projects
by Mike Gunderloy - Apr. 18, 2008Comments (1)- Related Blog Posts
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One of the big open source success stories of the past few years is Ruby on Rails. You can argue endlessly about the relative merits of this web framework versus others, but it's undeniable that Rails has gotten substantial marketing momentum and is an increasingly easy sell in corporate markets. But that doesn't mean that Rails developers have turned their back on open source.
Of course Rails itself (now proudly hosted on GitHub) is open source under a permissive license, as are most of the best-known Rails plugins. But indeividual developers have also put out a number of entire open-source projects based on Rails. A relatively new site, Open Source Rails, is now serving as a directory of those projects, complete with searching, tagging, comments, and screenshots.
The initial selection of sites is interesting. Of course, there are examples of developers scratching their own itches, with things like the Gitorious hosting tool, the RubyURL url shortener, and several project management systems. But there are other projects with a wider appeal: the LovdByLess social network software, the ActiveBudget finance manager, and the Abelo retail administration system.
As with any group of open source projects, Rails projects vary in depth, size, and speed of development. But it's nice to see them grouping together as evidence of the community giving more code back.
Are there any open source Rails resources that you recommend?
