The Software Internet Database 67
Larry points out an interesting project called The Software Internet Database, the goal of which "is to compile the largest database of software titles and credits on the Internet. This includes all types of software such as operating systems, security, financial, mapping, browsers, video editing, games, word processing, and more. They have made a good start but still need more titles. Please take some time to submit missing titles so that they may compile the database faster." It would be informative to have a subway-map overhead view to know which of these are still available from their makers,have been folded into other products, or are now abandonware.
good luck (Score:4, Informative)
Re:good luck (Score:4, Informative)
Yup, and rubyforge [rubyforge.org] and LuaForge [luaforge.net] as well. One hard part is sorting out duplicates... getting a list of the actual projects shouldn't be too hard since most project aggregation sites have RSS feeds with that info [rubyforge.org].
Re:good luck (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you are missing the point. This site intends to have all software and its current status. Sourceforge.net and freshmeat.net generally only have OSS software. Tinyapps.org has hardly anything and what they do have only focus's on software with a small footprint. Packetstorm is really only security software.
What I think that the authors of this site envision is
Re:good luck (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I've found that the value of freshmeat.net has been diluted, since they include non-OSS software. Then again, for all I know I can filter, and I've just been too lazy to do so.
Re:good luck (Score:2)
Sounds like this should be ... (Score:1)
Can I use this info? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can I use this info? (Score:1, Informative)
Makes picking new names easier (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes picking new names easier (Score:2)
Re:Wha? (Score:5, Insightful)
They want you to submit (Score:3, Insightful)
They have made a good start but still need more titles. Please take some time to submit missing titles so that they may compile the database faster."
Get busy
From my perspective
Re:They want you to submit (Score:1)
Slashdot has long been the "prWeb" for FOSS. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. This particular project is extremely lacking, though. I mean, really, what is it? Someone spooled up a copy of php-nuke with a few add-ons on a shared server. I think the submitter / web s
Uhhh... not very big... (Score:3, Insightful)
It only has somewhere between 100-200 titles... closer to 100. I can't even tell how many exactly, because their search tool is broken (can't go beyond the first page).
Search for an empty string (like I did) and it dumps the entire list.
Also their idea of web design leaves much to be desired. Who the hell stuck that black and gray logo on a white and off-white page? If they changed one to match the other it would look much better.
Re:Uhhh... not very big... (Score:4, Informative)
Metrics
As of: 7/3/2006 1:35:17 PM
Total titles: 83
Total versions: 107
Total organizations: 122
Total names: 81
Total credits: 90
Re:Uhhh... not very big... (Score:2)
(P.S. I could've come up with a list larger than this on my lunch break)
Activision AIM 5.9 Triton 1.0.4 American Chopper Version 2: Full Throttle XBOX Auto Control Beyond TV 4 CuteFTP 7 Home 7 Professional Digital Diary 3.3 Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil XBOX Doom III PC Doom III: Resurrection of Evil Expansion PC Fantastic Four PC XBOX FileZilla 2.2.22 Final Fantasy VIII ItsDeductible 7.0 JBoss Application Server 4.0 Kong: King of Atlantis GameBoy Adva
Good Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Not very complete (Score:3, Interesting)
I tried a few searches for projects I've worked on. No matches. Then I tried some searches for more popular software packages.. No matches for things like "Linux" or "GCC". What's this doing on slashdot? Nice idea but it's got a way to go.
Re:Not very complete (Score:2)
http://www.softwareidb.com/?q=sidb/title/1 [softwareidb.com] (Notice the title ID in the URL) (2nd is Windows [softwareidb.com]), and the first submitted credit is Bill Gates: http://www.softwareidb.com/?q=sidb/name/1 [softwareidb.com].
Oh, and Bill Gate's page could use a pic, why not submit one [monkeymethods.org]?
Re:Not very complete (Score:2)
Questions... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there supposed to be some kind of incentive for us to contribute to this effort? Will the info always be freely available? How can we be sure of that? What are they planning to do with the info? What is the business? Just selling ads? How do we know this isn't another Gracenote stunt? Why is this even posted here with so little info?
Re:Questions... (Score:1)
After a bunch of people do all of this work -- who will benefit? Who will get money? Will the information be accesible under a free license and in an open file format in 5 years?
Wikipedia's template for software entries may not be as robust as this site's design, and on Wikipedia even legitimate articles about unique topics seem to be deleted left and right, but for my money that still seems like a better place to do thi
Not ready for prime-time... (Score:3, Informative)
Also, when you submit these things, there is no indication of what is done with the information or when it might be posted.
Later, when you try to add a version, the drop-downs contain ALL companies and ALL versions. This is a recipe for future disaster - the author should probably have tried larger data sets when planning his interface.
Re:Not ready for prime-time... (Score:3, Funny)
Planning?
You're one of those altruistic optimists, aren't you?
Like Doom3, but better (Score:1)
So far this looks like the description of most SourceForge projects (see subject)...
(apologies to SourceForge - not trolling, honest!)
Either they'll get no funding... (Score:4, Interesting)
...or it will be spamridden. We have tucows, which was useable, but only had windows software. We have freshmeat, which is useable, but mostly free software. We have sourceforge, which hosts free software. Point is, all those software catalogs is either narrow in scope, requires registration from the individual software project, is spam ridden, or disappears.
And how would you rate programs? Ensure that links works? Whom should you credit for the programs? What if the homepage moves? Sounds like a lot of if's without good answers.
And if they are submission-based, how many will bother? How many dupes will there be? Is MS Office 2003 seperate program from MS Office 2004 for MAC? Is Firefox and mozilla discrete apps? What about the different parts of the KDE suite?
Not ready for prime time (Score:4, Interesting)
For instance there are only 83 titles in the database. And while this deficiency can be addressed by people contributing data there are design choices which I find puzzling. For instance, How is Bill Gates' height [softwareidb.com] relevant to the purpose of the project? And would it not be an idea to associate names with titles via a "role", rather than just a credit? Ie, I'd be interested to know of the 200 people who worked on, say, Starcraft, who was the producer, the artist, the game designer, the beta tester etc. As far as I can tell there is no way of identifying this at present.
Re:Not ready for prime time (Score:2)
Software Internet (Score:5, Funny)
*throws away tubes*
Re:Software Internet (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Software Internet (Score:3, Funny)
I good idea, as a start but.... (Score:2)
Issues of embedded code would have to be dealt with, but that could be worked into the system.
./ted (Score:2)
Of course there are Web search engines. But there is still room for a well-edited repository of software meta-data, as long as they have good reviews, a very detailled taxonomy of software types (not just "games", "database", but rather "mobile text adventure", "embedded spatial database").
The question is who is the audience, I couldn't tell be
IMDb (Score:2, Interesting)
Overload! (Score:1)
Warning: mysql_connect(): Too many connections in /home/hsphere/local/home/moonwink/softwareidb.com/ includes/database.mysql.inc on line 31
Too many connections
Someone has to ask... (Score:1)
Re:Someone has to ask... (Score:1)
Success? (Score:2, Interesting)
Deja Vu? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Deja Vu? (Score:3, Insightful)
Some Wikipedia articles do have extensive lists of software, but Wikipedia is not supposed to be a link list. I've seen very useful lists of software deleted from Wikipedia articles precisely because they were just link lists, not references for the article. These deletions were correct under Wikipedia policy [wikipedia.org].
Wikipedia's "Category: Software" already does this (Score:2)
Sure, but what about having an article for each piece of software and just adding the proper category tag to it? Wikipedia's Category: Software [wikipedia.org] (and its sub-categories) lists all the articles for software already on Wikipedia, and it's already far more extensive than this new "Software Internet Database."
Currently the site is... (Score:1)
Where's the Metadata ? (Score:2, Interesting)
There is now DOAP (description of a project) [usefulinc.com] - a vocabulary / schema that allows to mark up such information.
It would be much more fun to have machine-readable links between different titles that forked one from another, etc. Uses can be starting from "maps" of software evolution mentioned in above and to other uses yet to be imagined. (Note: I
7 years of catch-up to do for games (Score:2)
Categories please (Score:1)
Hasnt this been done before? (Score:2)
In case you arent old enough to remember the good old days of archie and gopher, this isnt a flame, its a joke.
Alternate free software database (Score:2)
It could be called... Debian!
VersionTracker (Score:1)
For example, if you search on "Quark", the application comes up, as well as a ton of plug-ins ("XTensions" in Quark-speak).