The Most Promising Open Source Projects to Watch for in 2018

The Most Promising Open Source Projects to Watch for in 2018
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.
pexels.com

Everyone and their mother is talking about open source projects. As you likely already know, at the core it’s a software which is used freely, shared globally in real-time and can be modified by virtually anyone. While there are a myriad of open source licenses offering users various degrees of freedom and leverage, they all have one thing in common: stimulating and encouraging collaboration.

Beyond merely publishing code, the whole notion of open source is to generate an immersive dialogue where anyone has the right to propose changes and make an impact. It’s all about collectively collaborating and inspiring community dialogues.

Loads and loads of open source projects are released annually, but there’s only a select few that truly stand out from the crowd. Here are some of the most eye-catching, exciting projects that have recently been unleashed to the world:

Vue

All the hype and buzz surrounding Vue isn’t without reason. Vue is a library for building interactive web interfaces and provides a simple, flexible API for its data-reactive components. These guys have mastered the art of the progressive Javascript framework, which allows you to easily build UI on the web. Many developers point to Vue as their tool of choice.

Bit

bitsrc.io

Keep your eyes peeled for Bit, a Tel Aviv-based startup that is revolutionizing the way bits of code are shared across the globe. In the age of code components, this platform enables developers to share, modify and send an arsenal of components across teams, along with projects to build any application. Whether React or Angular components or any other source code, these composable building blocks are radically shifting the coding infrastructure, encouraging users to share existing code rather than craft it from scratch.

Styled Components

Styled Components is one of the hottest open source projects and is bound to accrue more popularity in the coming years. In a nutshell, they allow you to write CSS to style your components, making for a simple and aesthetically-pleasing creation. They’ve gained over 10K stars via GitHub, and the best is surely yet to come!

KolibriOS

This education-tech platform and toolkit has a streamlined code-base and essentially provides learning resources for students and teachers alike. KolibriOS provides a vast spectrum of educational content, completely offline! You can sync content and data seamlessly and learn at your very own pace. No wonder TechRadar referred to them as “tremendously impressive”. What’s next on YOUR learning list?

Apollo Data

apollodata.com

Apollo Data is a super hot San Francisco-based startup enables you to build UI components to supercharge your ability to fetch server data. The great part is that their production-ready caching partner, GraphQL, operates on every server or UI framework.

Polymer 2.0 Project

Polymer 2.0 is an open source JavaScript library for building web applications using components. The platform enables you to generate custom reusable HTML elements. Polymer is being developed by the creme de la creme--a.k.a. Google developers and top contributors--on GitHub. Keep your eyes peeled--they’re building an incredible open source library!

Johnny Five

johnny-five.io/

Last, but certainly not least, is the Javascript open source Robotics and IoT (Internet of Things) programming framework. Johnny Five comprises of a zealous team of software developers and hardware engineers who have cultivated a robustly composable ecosystem.

The beauty of open source code is that it can be shared and modified anytime, anywhere, with anyone. It seems to be steering us towards component-based softwares. Let’s see what 2018 has in store for the open source universe!

Want to learn more about open source?

If you want to get more immersive and hands-on with open source projects, please check out

The Linux Foundation Open Source Summit. Prague, October 23-26, 2017.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot