DOSBox is a free and open-sourceMS-DOSemulator. It supports running programs – primarily video games – that are otherwise inaccessible since hardware for running a compatible disk operating system (DOS) is obsolete and generally unavailable today. It was first released in 2002, when DOS technology was becoming obsolete. Its adoption for running DOS games is relatively widespread, partly because of its use in commercial re-releases of games. (Full article...)
The Ur-Quan Masters is a 2002 open-source fangame modification, based on the action-adventure science fiction game Star Control II. The original game was released for PCs in 1992 and ported to the 3DO console in 1994. It has been frequently mentioned among the best games of all time, with additional praise for its writing, world design, character design, and music.
After the Star Control II copyrights reverted to creators Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford, they licensed their content to their fan community under the GNU General Public License, to keep their series in the public eye. The open-source development team remade the 3DO version as a port to modern operating systems, and allowed fan-made modifications to add improvements absent in the original release. Released under the title The Ur-Quan Masters (the subtitle of the original game), the modified remake has since been downloaded nearly two million times, earning critical reception as one of the best free games available, with additional praise for a high-definition graphics fan modification. (Full article...)
Leafpad has a small install size compared to other graphical text editors and has minimal features such as codeset options, undo/redo, and the ability to choose fonts. Leafpad is the default text editor for the LXDE lightweight desktop environment, and thus Leafpad is found on Linux distributions that use LXDE as their desktop environment such as Raspberry Pi OS, as well as on some embedded systems. The program has been forked into Mousepad and l3afpad, and parts of Leafpad's code have been used in other text editors. Leafpad is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. (Full article...)
rio, default user interface of Plan 9 from Bell Labs
Plan 9 from Bell Labs is an operating system designed by the Computing Science Research Center (CSRC) at Bell Labs in the mid-1980s, built on the UNIX concepts first developed there in the late 1960s. Since 2000, Plan 9 has been free and open-source. The final official release was in early 2015.
File:Brave Logo (2024).svg Brave is a free and open-sourceweb browser which was first released in 2016. It is developed by US-based Brave Software, Inc. and based on the Chromium web browser. The browser is marketed as a privacy-focused web browser and includes features such as built-in advertisement blocking, protections against browser fingerprinting and a private browsing mode that integrates the Tor anonymity network. Brave also incorporates its own advertising through a rewards system based on cryptocurrency, which allows users to earn Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) by opting-in to view ads served through its ad network. While Brave has been praised for its privacy protections and features, it has faced criticism over early plans of replacing publisher's ads with its own and missteps surrounding its handling of affiliate links and privacy vulnerabilities in its private browsing mode. (Full article...)
It had its inaugural release in 2003 as freeware for Windows. Dolphin was the first GameCube emulator that could successfully run commercial games. After troubled development in the first years, Dolphin became free and open-source software and subsequently gained support for Wii emulation. Soon after, the emulator was ported to Linux and macOS. As mobile hardware became more powerful over the years, running Dolphin on Android became a viable option.
Dolphin has been well received in the IT and video gaming media for its high compatibility, steady development progress, the number of available features, and the ability to play games with graphical improvements over the original platforms. (Full article...)
File:Pocket Casts logo.svg Pocket Casts is a podcast streaming service originally launched in 2011 for iOS and Android. The app allows for searching, downloading and subscribing to podcasts and syncs across devices. Pocket Casts was developed by Russell Ivanovic and Philip Simpson under the Australian independent development team Shifty Jelly. In 2018, the app was acquired by a group of public radio organisations including National Public Radio before being sold to WordPress.com owner Automattic in 2021.
With initial development efforts focusing on Android, Pocket Casts for iOS and Android was made free and open source in 2022 and received its latest major release 8.0 in 2025. It was also launched for the web, macOS, and Windows, and integrated to car head units, smart speakers, and smartwatch operating systems. Initially requiring a one-time fee, Pocket Casts switched to a freemium model in 2019, adding a subscription plan with more features. Commentators have directed praise to the array of features and the interface's simplicity. In 2020, a request by the Cyberspace Administration of China led to the removal of Pocket Casts from Apple's App Store in China. (Full article...)
Terrence Andrew Davis (December 15, 1969 – August 11, 2018) was an American electrical engineer, computer programmer, and outsider artist best known for creating and designing TempleOS, a public domainoperating system. In 1996, Davis began experiencing regular manic episodes, some of which led to hospitalization. Initially diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he was later declared to have schizophrenia. Eight months before his death, he struggled with periods of homelessness. His fans brought him supplies, but Davis refused their offers of housing. In August 2018, he was struck by a train and died at the age of 48. (Full article...)
Open-source licenses are software licenses that allow content to be used, modified, and shared. They facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative works. Free and open-source licenses use these existing legal structures for an inverse purpose. They grant the recipient the rights to use the software, examine the source code, modify it, and distribute the modifications. These criteria are outlined in the Open Source Definition.
The two main categories of open-source licenses are permissive and copyleft. Both grant permission to change and distribute software. Typically, they require attribution and disclaim liability. Permissive licenses come from academia. Copyleft licenses come from the free software movement. Copyleft licenses require derivative works to be distributed with the source code and under a similar license. Since the mid-2000s, courts in multiple countries have upheld the terms of both types of license. Software developers have filed cases as copyright infringement and as breaches of contract. (Full article...)
In general, Debian has been developed openly and distributed freely according to some of the principles of the GNU Project and Free Software. Because of this, the Free Software Foundation sponsored the project from November 1994 to November 1995. However, Debian is no longer endorsed by GNU and the FSF because of the distribution's long-term practice of hosting non-free software repositories and, since 2022, its inclusion of non-free firmware in its installation media by default. On June 16, 1997, the Debian Project founded Software in the Public Interest, a nonprofit organization, to continue financing its development. (Full article...)
Software developer Graydon Hoare created Rust in 2006 while working at Mozilla, which officially sponsored the project in 2009. The first stable release, Rust 1.0, was published in May 2015. Following a layoff of Mozilla employees in August 2020, four other companies joined Mozilla in sponsoring Rust through the creation of the Rust Foundation in February 2021.
Rust has been adopted by many software projects, especially web services and system software. It has been studied academically and has a growing community of developers. (Full article...)
Tux Racer is a 2000 open-sourcewinter sportsracing video game starring the Linux mascot, Tux the penguin. It was originally developed by Jasmin Patry as a computer graphics project at the University of Waterloo. Later on, Patry and the newly founded Sunspire Studios, composed of several former students of the university, expanded it. In the game, the player controls Tux as he slides down a course of snow and ice collecting herrings.
Tux Racer was officially downloaded over one million times as of 2001. It also was well received, often being acclaimed for the graphics, fast-paced gameplay, and replayability, and was a fan favorite among Linux users and the free software community. The game's popularity secured the development of a proprietized release that included enhanced graphics and multiplayer, and it also became the first GPL-licensed game to receive an arcade adaptation. It is the only product that Sunspire Studios developed and released, after which the company liquidated. (Full article...)
Dillon started DragonFly in the belief that the techniques adopted for threading and symmetric multiprocessing in FreeBSD 5 would lead to poor performance and maintenance problems. He sought to correct these anticipated problems within the FreeBSD project. Due to conflicts with other FreeBSD developers over the implementation of his ideas, his ability to directly change the codebase was eventually revoked. Despite this, the DragonFly BSD and FreeBSD projects still work together, sharing bug fixes, driver updates, and other improvements. Dillon named the project after photographing a dragonfly in his yard, while he was still working on FreeBSD.
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