Most open source projects are libraries or frameworks

3 min readJul 3, 2017

We found that 60% of the most popular projects on GitHub are libraries or frameworks (including web and non-web ones).

We performed a manual classification of the application domain of 5,000 GitHub repositories (the most popular ones, by number of stars, on January, 2017).

We classified each project in one of the following application domains:

Application software: systems that provide functionalities to end-users, like browsers and text editors (e.g., WordPress/WordPress and adobe/brackets).
System software: systems that provide services and infrastructure to other systems, like operating systems, middleware, and databases (e.g., torvalds/linux and mongodb/mongo).
Web libraries and frameworks (e.g., twbs/bootstrap and angular/angular.js).
Non-web libraries and frameworks (e.g., google/guava and facebook/fresco).
Software tools: systems that support development tasks, like IDEs, package managers, and compilers (e.g., Homebrew/homebrew and git/git).
Documentation: repositories with documentation, tutorials, source code examples, etc. (e.g., iluwatar/java-design-patterns).

The results are in the following figure.

The top-3 domains are web libraries and frameworks (1,535 repositories, 30.7%), non-web libraries and frameworks (1,439 repositories, 28.7%), and software tools (972 repositories, 19.4%).

Most open source projects are libraries or frameworks

Most popular applications:

atom/atom

atom: The hackable text editor

jekyll/jekyll

jekyll - :globe_with_meridians: Jekyll is a blog-aware, static site generator in Ruby

adobe/brackets

brackets - An open source code editor for the web, written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS.

resume/resume.github.com

resume.github.com - Resumes generated using the GitHub informations

NARKOZ/hacker-scripts

hacker-scripts - Based on a true story

Most popular repositories with documentation:

freeCodeCamp/freeCodeCamp

The https://freeCodeCamp.com open source codebase and curriculum. Learn to code and help nonprofits.

getify/You-Dont-Know-JS

You-Dont-Know-JS - A book series on JavaScript. @YDKJS on twitter.

airbnb/javascript

javascript - JavaScript Style Guide

vinta/awesome-python

awesome-python - A curated list of awesome Python frameworks, libraries, software and resources

chrislgarry/Apollo-11

Apollo-11 - Original Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (AGC) source code for the command and lunar modules.

Most popular software tools:

robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh

oh-my-zsh - A delightful community-driven (with 1,000+ contributors) framework for managing your zsh configuration…

tensorflow/tensorflow

tensorflow - Computation using data flow graphs for scalable machine learning

Homebrew/legacy-homebrew

legacy-homebrew - :skull: The former home of Homebrew

AFNetworking/AFNetworking

AFNetworking - A delightful networking framework for iOS, OS X, watchOS, and tvOS.

jakubroztocil/httpie

Modern command line HTTP client - user-friendly curl alternative with intuitive UI, JSON support, syntax highlighting…

Most popular web libraries and frameworks:

twbs/bootstrap

bootstrap - The most popular HTML, CSS, and JavaScript framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on…

d3/d3

d3 - Bring data to life with SVG, Canvas and HTML. :bar_chart::chart_with_upwards_trend::tada:

facebook/react

react - A declarative, efficient, and flexible JavaScript library for building user interfaces.

angular/angular.js

angular.js - AngularJS - HTML enhanced for web apps!

FortAwesome/Font-Awesome

Font-Awesome - The iconic font and CSS toolkit

Most popular non-web libraries and frameworks:

electron/electron

electron - Build cross platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS

socketio/socket.io

socket.io - Realtime application framework (Node.JS server)

moment/moment

moment - Parse, validate, manipulate, and display dates in javascript.

Alamofire/Alamofire

Alamofire - Elegant HTTP Networking in Swift

lodash/lodash

lodash - A modern JavaScript utility library delivering modularity, performance, & extras.

Written by aserg.ufmg