Mentions historical sites like freshmeat.net, usage of Github Stars as a not very good metric, and things like OpenHub.
Newer sites and tools mentioned include:
Linux Foundation supported Community Health Analytics Open Source Software — CHAOSS https://chaoss.community/
Bitergia’s tools https://bitergia.com/
Grimoire Labs which is itself a core part of CHAOSS — open source tooling for software development analytics http://chaoss.github.io/grimoirelab/
I think the very question of whether you want / need a “yelp” for open source tools needs to be questioned.
For developers selecting to build on top of or extend tools — definitely a question.
For end users of apps, likely less interest.
Or at least, a situation where license type is going to matter in different ways for different people.
As an end user selecting an app, I have questions around if my data is locked up, whether the core project is maintained, and how I might be able to help evolve it or see more features.
And I’m probably an extreme outlier here.
For Fission, knowing that apps give you control over your data is a good baseline. Questions about user hack ability (built in themes and preferences) or remixing become interesting.
I’m starting to think about analogies — like “Unsplash for Apps”. That’s not quite right — supporting and promoting both non-commercial licenses and user supported (shareware?) apps is something I want to see for devs on the Fission platform.
But the Unsplash label should highlight the abundance of apps that anyone can try — as opposed to the relatively high barrier of self hosting or creating an entire SaaS service.
