Most Popular Open Source Projects 1990 - 2026 From the quiet beginnings of the Linux Kernel to the global dominance of Android, watch the incredible evolution of Open Source Software over the last 35 years. In this Bar Chart Race I visualize the approximate number of active installs of the world's most critical open source projects. 📊 Key Eras in the Animation: The Early 90s: Watch the rise of foundational tools like Linux, Vim, Emacs, and GCC as they build the bedrock of modern computing. The Dot-Com Boom (Late 90s - 2000s): See the explosion of the web as Apache, PHP, and MySQL take over the internet. The Browser Wars: Witness Firefox challenging the status quo and the massive rise of Chromium. The Mobile Revolution (2010s): Android enters the race and skyrockets to billions of users, becoming the most widely used OS in history. Modern DevOps (2015 - 2026): Track the rapid adoption of developer tools like Git, Docker, Kubernetes, and VS Code as they define the cloud era. 📝 Data Notes: Values: These numbers are calculated using Google Trends in combination with data from Stack Overflow Surveys, Git Hub Articles, JetBrains Developer Ecosystem Report, Kaggle, Google Books, industry DBs and early tech articles. Units: Numbers represent approximate active installs. I removed some projects whose numbers did not look accurate at all, such as for OpenSSL. Projects Included: Linux, Python, Apache, MySQL, VLC, Firefox, WordPress, Git, Android, Node.js, Docker, VS Code, and more. #OpenSource #DataVisualization #Linux #Android #TechHistory #Programming #BarChartRace
ADVERTISEMENT
kinda surprised there is no ffmpeg
I'm surprised Python was adopted so early, at the same time as Perl.
Most popular distros over time please!! 🙏🙏
SQLite is the king, every Linux, Android, Windows, iOS, MacOS, BSD, ... instance will likely have half a dozen SQLite instances running in the background, many a desktop and mobile app being built atop an instance. As will all the Linux / Android / BSD / Windows / Amiga / RISC OS / ... instances likely also have a sub-set, or two, of the GNU Core Utilities installed.
This song always transports me back to 1998, when I bought my first computer with my own money. The first conversations on ICQ and mIRC, Codename: Tenka, the voices of my parents, the barking of my dog, and my niece, just one year old, with her little black eyes paying attention to what I was doing. Today I am 46 years old, writing a comment on YouTube, I am a math teacher and I play Elden Ring when I have spare time. My niece left us three years ago in a car accident, but her daughter is here by my side at 8 years old playing Forza Horizon on my Xbox and making my old parents laugh a lot. And I have a puppy with the same name as the one I mentioned earlier.
What's the source of the data and how was the data for approx. active installs aggregated?
VLC is my favorite it's been super useful for so many years without being sold and destroyed by anybody.
Most popular according to what, among what group ? What are the units ? For example, curl is often considered as the most deployed ever opensource software, totaling around 10 billion installations, and doesn't even appear here, so what are the criteria to select which software appear ?
I'm kind of surprised Arduino wasn't on there since it is open source
IDK if all of these should be aggregated together. You’re comparing programming languages to OS’s to browsers…
2:08 LibreOffice in January, 1999?
Thank you Microsoft for causing the world to turn to Linux. I knew you could do it!
SQLite????
More linux installs than people alive (excluding Android)? Probably many servers or virtual machines included. Maybe they included every single docker container. Also surprised clang/rust didn't come up yet. The Ruby on Rails craze was also smaller than expected. And I wasn't sure if Chrome/Edge counts (they bundle chromium, but aren't open source themselves)
Damn so there are more linux running machines than number of people living
Guessing that the one Linux user in 1990 is Linus Torvalds?
Damn, more Linux installs than people.
I think that you forgot the LLVM project with Clang. Other operational systems were not shown in this list..
Damn, all the software in this list is legendary.
How was there any Linux users at the beginning of 1990 (beginning of the video)? Linux wasn’t released until Aug 1991. Are they counting Linus?