Well we here at s2r use a lot of open source software, that is not to say we don’t use some proprietary or custom made software from time to time, but that’s mostly when you get into that kind of situation where if you want your project to come to life and there is no alternative, you have to make it on your own, but for the most part the logic to use a stable free platform, not only saves time of not doing ourselves but more important it give you the freedom to work on the frontside and the community and the service and not so much on what and how it works… like… you want to bake a cake, you could buy it made, but making it and fiddling with the dosages and making the recipe your own is way more fun and more pleasurable… right ^_^ but you don’t want to go all out and plant the grain and sugar cane and make flour and sugar and have chickens for the eggs… that is awesome in its own way but i like my balance of awesomeness hehehe, soo what are our favorite and most used open source software and why do we use it?
Used extensively
WordPress > There is a reason why it is widely used, its a solid blog/light cms system that can be configured to do a 1001 different things
SMF > My favorite Forum Software, just cause its breakneck solid and feature complete
Drupal > By far my personal favorite cms, its still not perfect but it works perfectly and very modable, still its not that user-friendly and takes a long time to make stuff shine
Zenphoto > Don’t know… i just like how it works, simple and to the point gallery software, if it doesn’t have a feature its kinda easy to make it and it just works
Not used extensively but still used and recommended
bbPress > wished it was more solid, still a good and simple forum software (i’m always between bbPress and Vanilla)
Joomla > second best to drupal, a very good cms, its just not that matured and it sometimes breaks hard
Elgg > social networking, its very plain and still needs a lot of work
FluxBB > punBB fork, since punBB was sold to a commercial company and it kinda seems to be going on another direction now…
Formerly used but dropped for some reason
PhpBB > even with the new version, its still a mess of a software and it needs constant attention and care to make it work as it should
Gallery > too many options but not the ones i wished, i kinda would like it more, if it was a lightweight flickr, but its more a oversize personal gallery
PHP-Nuke > basically one developer, with security breaches from time to time and too cluncky and unworkable
Movabletype > it was pretty cool before it went full commercial and now that is kinda open source its much better, but i just don’t trust a company that flips all the time with my sites ^^
PunBB > dont like the direction they are going, besides now its moved by a commercial entity (not that a lot of other open source software dont do the same, mostly cause i dont like the direction hehehe)