Open-Source Systems You May Have Taken for Granted: 10 Examples

A key moment in IT history took place in Mountain View, Calif., on Feb. 3, 1998. That was the day a small group of Silicon Valley software developers (which included Dr. Larry Augustin, now CEO of SugarDB, Eric Raymond and Christine Peterson) sat down to decide that there needed to be an actual name for a new software development genre. The now-familiar term "open source" was first coined at this meeting.

Since that day, the open-source movement—led today by Linus Torvalds' Linux—has evolved to affect every corner of the IT industry. Open source now is more mature than ever, with today's landscape encompassing a much broader range of applications benefiting industry and society. From Web servers to big data analytics to cloud computing to research and exploration, the following is a look at some of the most innovative open-source technologies and projects that illustrate just how far the movement has come.

In this slide show, eWEEK and Concurrent CEO Gary Nakamura provide a listing of 10 well-known IT use cases that rely heavily—or even solely—on open-source software. Concurrent makes an software platform for Enterprise big data applications.