You’ve heard that the world’s infrastructure runs on Linux, and how important Free and Open Source (FOSS) software is to just about all the technology we enjoy every day, but there are some (to bring out the old cliché) unsung heroes of FOSS without which your stuff just wouldn’t work—and you should at least know their names.
SQLite quietly runs almost everything
I’m not going to sugar-coat it—databases are boring. However, they are super-useful and entirely necessary for many apps to function. SQLite is a FOSS database solution that allows for a self-contained database stored in a single file. It’s a self-contained database solution that doesn’t require a separate database management system or servers. It’s the world’s most deployed database solution and it’s all over your applications. From web browsers to messaging apps, it’s probably using SQLite. According to the official site, SQLite is in:
“Every Android device. Every iPhone and iOS device. Every Mac. Every Windows10 machine. Every Firefox, Chrome, and Safari web browser. Every instance of Skype. Every instance of iTunes. Every Dropbox client. Every TurboTax and QuickBooks. PHP and Python. Most television sets and set-top cable boxes. Most automotive multimedia systems. Countless millions of other applications.”
Without SQLite, most of the software you use would probably be quite a bit slower, and fewer apps would be made because developers can’t all roll their own database solutions.
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OpenSSL keeps your data from leaking all over the internet
OpenSSL is why you see that little padlock next to a web address in your browser. It’s one of the core implementations behind HTTPS and it powers secure logins, API calls to web services, encrypted data tunnels, and private messages in the apps you use to speak to other people.
OpenSSL is so important that when a vulnerability in OpenSSL like Heartbleed is discovered, it can lead to widespread panic and a real danger of catastrophe. This is why OpenSSL is one of the most frequently patched and updated FOSS projects, and without it most of what you do on the internet (like online shopping or banking) just wouldn’t be feasible for safety reasons.
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FFmpeg makes video and audio “just work”
It’s not just a hilarious and witty social media account, no FFmpeg is also the ultimate solution for video decoding, encoding, and everything in between. It’s the Swiss Army Knife of multimedia frameworks, it’s open-source, and if you use any software that plays video, it almost certainly has FFmpeg in there somewhere. It’s why your social media video upload just works on any device and platform. FFmpeg is silently doing all the heavy lifting in the background.
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Electron fuels modern desktop apps you think are native
If you’ve used the desktop clients for Slack, ChatGPT, Claude, Visual Studio, Discord, and so, so many more, then you’ve used Electron.
There are numerous web technologies that have been developed to let you run apps in your browser. So if all that work’s already been done to get something like Slack or Discord running in your browser, why do the work twice? Electron is a cross-platform, open source framework that lets you take web technologies, and use them to build apps that look like native clients for the operating system in question.
Of course, Electron has become something of a target for derision with issues around performance and efficiency compared to a true native app written for macOS, Windows, Linux, and so forth. But, it’s worth having a little perspective here. Without Electron plenty of these services wouldn’t bother making separate desktop apps at all. Electron makes it possible for small and medium-sized developers who have to prioritize the web version of their tool to also serve the needs of everyone who needs a separate app. With computer power being abundant these days, it’s not such a big sacrifice given the reward.
Libpng and libjpeg process the images you never think about
Almost every time you use a device to open a photo, take a photo, look at a web page or otherwise interact with digital pictures, you’re probably making use of libpng and libjpeg.
These are the respective libraries that allow apps to read PNG and JPEG images, encode them, and otherwise work with these formats. We may have seen newer image formats like WebP and AVIF gain some popularity over the past few years on the web in particular, but PNG and JPEG images remain the most common and most widely compatible. Largely because these two lbraries are open for anyone to use.
Creating software costs time and money, so we should be grateful that some of the most effective and useful pieces of software ever made are open and free. Without them, enjoying our technology would me much more expensive, with much less choice.