FOSSfind FAQ

What is FOSSfind?

This site is a simple, search-engine-like mashup on top of ohloh.net designed to make it easier to find the leading open source projects in a particular technical category (e.g. Javascript frameworks, E-Commerce, Databases). Once you find the category and top projects, you can click through to Ohloh or the project's home page to learn more.

Why did you build it?

Figuring out which Open Source projects to rely on can be really hard-- in most areas there are many options and the "best" options are frequently changing. For more details, read the About page.

How are tags sized?

The tag cloud sizing is based on the number of projects matching each tag.

Why do some projects show up ahead of others?

Projects listed in each category are ordered by number reported by Ohloh for how many of that site's users are using that Open Source project. Note that for smaller projects the sample size is very small, so be careful about weighing project ordering if there's only a few votes.

My favorite project is missing. Help!

Go to ohloh.net and add the project there.

A project is not tagged correctly, has wrong description, etc. Help!

Go to ohloh.net-- you can fix data problems there really easily.

What technology is FOSSfind.com built on?

Here's the FOSSfind.com technology stack, starting from the front end and working backwards:

Javascript Framework: JQuery
Web Framework: ASP.NET MVC
Programming Languages: C# 3.0 and JavaScript
Database: MySQL
Source Control: Subversion (although considering moving to GIT)

I also make heavy use of a few really cool plugins and samples. Many thanks to the contributors!

Dylan Verheul's JQuery autocomplete plugin
Html Agility Pack, a high-performance HTML parser
Darick C's HTTP Compression Module which also handles JS and CSS min-ifying. This is some really useful code. Although Darick did the final assembly and a lot of coding, there's also a lot of other smart engineers whose work this is adapted from. Thanks to all of you!
Daniel Cazzulino's Caching XPath library
Brian Rudolph's Thread Safe Dictionary

Of course, this site's data comes from Ohloh.net. I can't say enough good things about their site-- aside from some minor usability and discoverability issues (the reasons why I wrote *this* site) Ohloh is an incredible resource for open-source newbies and experts alike.

Isn't it hypocritical (or at least weird) to build an open-source-focused site on ASP.NET?

Yep, but practical considerations won out for now. I originally wanted to build this site in Ruby on Rails (and I still may port the web front end to Ruby at some point, and may even do a Groovy port if I'm feeling adventurous). But I opted to use ASP.NET MVC (initially at least) for several reasons:

I do heavy-duty HTML and XML parsing on the back end in order to assemble the data, and I had some really great parsing libraries in C# which I knew would meet my performance goals. I wasn't confident I could get the same perf in Ruby without without dropping back down to C++ for the heavy lifting, which I wanted to avoid.
To save time and share code and tests, I wanted to avoid having the back end processing and front end in different platforms or languages.
My Ruby skills are still raw enough that I was not confident that I would be able to build a high-performance site in a week or two... and I was impatient!
I wanted to learn ASP.NET MVC anyways, and this was a good excuse.

Comments? Questions? Bug Reports?

Definitely feel free to send feedback to info(at)FOSSfind.com.

Thanks!
Justin Grant
http://www.linkedin.com/in/justingrantjg