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This paper provides quantitative data that, in many cases, using open
source software / free software is a reasonable or even superior
approach to using their proprietary competition according to various
measures. This paper's goal is to show that you should consider using
OSS/FS when acquiring software. There are many good reasons to use
OSS/FS, and there's actually quantitative data justifying some of its
claims (such as higher reliability).

7.1 Major Projects
A List of important OSS/FS programs that are generally recognized as mature.
Major OSS/FS Projects include:
1. Linux kernel,
2. Apache (web server),
3. Samba (supports interoperability with Windows clients by acting as
a Windows file and print server),
4. GNOME (a desktop environment),
5. KDE (also a desktop environment),
6. The GIMP (bitmapped image editor),
7. MySQL (database emphasizing speed),
8. PostgreSQL (database emphasizing functionality),
9. PHP (hypertext preprocessor used for web development),
10. Mailman (mailing list manager),
11. XFree86 (graphics infrastructure which implements the X window system),
12. bind (domain naming service, a critical Internet infrastructure service),
13. GNU Compiler Collection (GCC, a suite of compilation tools for C,
C++, and several other languages),
14. Perl (programming/scripting language),
15. Python (another programming/scripting language),
16. Mozilla (web browser and email client),
17. OpenOffice.org (office suite, including word processor,
spreadsheet, and presentation software),
The open source BSD Operating systems
FreeBSD (general purpose),
OpenBSD (security-focused),
NetBSD (portability-focused)).
A great deal of documentation is available at the Linux Documentation
Project (LDP).
A number of up and coming projects are at an alpha or beta level. Some
projects that have the potential to be very important, have running
code, and are working toward more functionality or stability include
the following: Wine (a program to allow Windows programs to run on
Unix-like systems, AbiWord (a word processor), Gnumeric (spreadsheet),
KOffice (office suite), and GnuCash (money management).
Web projects around the world often use LAMP, an abbreviation for
Linux, Apache, MySQL (sometimes replaced with PostgreSQL), and
PHP/Perl/Python. More complex web projects may use major libraries or
frameworks, such as PHP-Nuke (based on PHP) and Zope (based on
Python).