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
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Estadísticas al estilo Walll Street 👍🏻
Sqlite??
The thing is, Linux was always #1 on the list. The "by downloads" is the key word here.
Let's compare an operating system with an open source variant of excel... yeah, sounds about right...
BSD not on the list? Consider its the base for closed and open operating systems it should be.
Poor Firefox. I won't give up on you ❤
Python showing up that early surprised me too. In my org it became real only when we started wiring automations around Pneumatic Workflow.
this is super interesting, learned a lot
Interresting how close apache and nginx are, i wonder if the'll change places this year. Wold you mind making a followup wideo to this in jan/feb next year. And mebt (just to mice dthe difference between th other projects a bit more pronounced) skip the bare for linux ( nithings going to sutpass it in 2026 anyway) and jyst ad a nore rgat linux has been no 1 since Octoer 2004 nut is omitid due to scaling issues. As an exaplen in Ocrober 2004 gimp has allmost twice as many users as PostgreSQL but gimps bar is hardly any longer due to rhevlinux bar dwarfing it ( this issue just becomes worse as tinke goes by an at the end with linux allmost twisecas karge as no2 the issues for anyrhing belo no5 becomes, shal wecsay, significabt, yes the absolute numbers help but for antone not oasing often reading the numbers can be a bit of a chalkange
I don't understand why LyX have not been popular, since it is amazing!!!
how does python have millions of installs pre-y2k? it was very very niche pre version 2. Not to mention embracing open source solutions tends to be a package deal. for instance you don't tend to see a lot of apache or samba instances running without linux. And how do you even quantify the number of installs on some of these things in the largely pre-online world of the 90s? there were NO records kept when someone shared a floppy with an open-source program on it.
Crazy how stable the list has been for the last 9 years, without any revolutionary new software dethroning the biggest players. Almost like innovation has stagnated...
I assume all are based on download numbers which are not fully relevant for "adoption" . But each download trend is relevant ( ie for example perl is dying )
makes me appreciate all the coding done for free
No ffmpeg is a huge omission, that thing is everywhere. Also curious how you’d count workflow tools like Pneumatic Workflow in a popularity race.
Did not expect vlc to be this high. But... isnt sqlite open source? Just last year they announced the 1 trillion milestone.
Oh my, Sendmail was a weird thing... with its config and M4 preprocessor. And now you can't have your mailbox in a dark basement. Well, you can.. but mostly nobody will receive mail from it.
Surprised that Nginx didn't overtake Apache yet according to this, I haven't used Apache for years and to me it feels like it's only used by legacy projects. I'm also a bit skeptical that Wordpress overtook both Apache and Nginx since Wordpress basically needs one of them to run in production. The fact that PHP is hanging around for so long is also likely because of Wordpress.
Where is openjdk?
Libre Office comes with most popular Linux distros. Surprised it’s not higher.