Open Source History Lessons: 5 FOSS Projects That Didn't Pan Out
![Open Source History Lessons: 5 FOSS Projects That Didn't Pan Out Open Source History Lessons: 5 FOSS Projects That Didn't Pan Out](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt54f699938ad24287/65246614178389f9d8cadaff/Open_Source_Thinkstock_0.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Corel Linux had a big dream: Bundle a Debian GNU/Linux environment with WordPerfect so people could do serious productivity work. When Corel launched in 1999 and other word processors for Linux remained incomplete, this was a big deal.
But WordPerfect turned out not to be compelling enough on its own to persuade the masses to migrate from Windows to Linux, and the debut of OpenOffice in the same year as Corel's release made Corel a less unique proposition. The distribution was defunct by the end of 2000.
The Diaspora developers had what seemed like a novel idea: Create a social networking platform that actually protects users' privacy (instead of just claiming to do so) and, to boot, is available under an open source license — specifically, the AGPL. Enough Internet users believed in the vision to supply $200,000 in crowdfunding in 2010.
Diaspora was not a failure. It still exists today. But the fact that you probably haven't heard of it suggests that there is less interest in an open source alternative to Facebook than I wish there were. And alas, being sticklers for grammar ("share what you want, with whom you want") has not seemed to help Diaspora get off the ground, either.
The Hurd is the GNU project's answer to the Linux kernel — or, better put, the software that was supposed to make Linux unnecessary in the first place. Introduced in the early 1990s, the Hurd was supposed to be a revolutionary piece of software, which would adopt a microkernel architecture in order to provide a more elegant and sophisticated kernel than a monolithic one like Linux — at least in theory.
In practice, Hurd does have a lot of innovative features. But it has never come close to being complete, which is why Linux became the kernel that, paired with other software from Richard Stallman's GNU project, made it possible to run computers using only free software for the first time starting in the early 1990s.
You can boot the Hurd if you really want, and development on it is still active, but don't hold out hope for a production-quality GNU/Hurd release in this lifetime.
Wouldn't it be cool if you could run Windows without running Windows? That's what ReactOS aims to make possible. The project's goal is to create a clone of Windows using only free and open source code.
It's kind of like Wine, the Windows compatibility layer for Linux. But instead of just letting users run Windows applications on top of a Linux environment, ReactOS tries to implement a complete Windows environment. There's no Linux involved.
ReactOS, which launched in 1996, kind of works, and the project is continuing to chug along. Personally, I'm crossing my fingers that it will one day reach maturity. But it's far from being production quality, and given that it's twenty years old — and that Windows is evolving faster than the code trying to clone it — it seems unlikely that ReactOS will ever allow you to have your Windows and eat it, too.
Ah, VA Linux: The company that set records by gaining 698 percent in value when its stock went public in December 1999, in the heady days of the dot-com bubble. It was the most successful IPO in history.
Yet hopes that VA Linux, which focused on selling hardware with Linux pre-installed, would prove as successful as Red Hat (which had gone public a few months earlier) were soon shattered. Within a year of its IPO VA Linux's stock had sunk to about 3 percent of its value at the end of the first day of trading.
VA Linux was not a total failure, though. After the Linux hardware business bottomed out, the company shifted focus to online media targeted at the geek community, including sites like Slashdot and Sourceforge. It eventually morphed into what is today Geeknet.
Ah, VA Linux: The company that set records by gaining 698 percent in value when its stock went public in December 1999, in the heady days of the dot-com bubble. It was the most successful IPO in history.
Yet hopes that VA Linux, which focused on selling hardware with Linux pre-installed, would prove as successful as Red Hat (which had gone public a few months earlier) were soon shattered. Within a year of its IPO VA Linux's stock had sunk to about 3 percent of its value at the end of the first day of trading.
VA Linux was not a total failure, though. After the Linux hardware business bottomed out, the company shifted focus to online media targeted at the geek community, including sites like Slashdot and Sourceforge. It eventually morphed into what is today Geeknet.
There's no denying the success of free and open source software projects like Linux, Apache and (probably) OpenStack. But what about the FOSS projects and companies that have enjoyed less success? Here's a look at some free and open source software projects or businesses that had good ideas, yet never delivered on them (at least not fully).
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