It used to be that many folks in open source, both developers and users, lamented that despite the innovative nature of their software, there wasn’t much progress coming from their main repositories and directories such as SourceForge.net and Freshmeat.net. There have been some efforts such as Google’s project hosting, Subversion development for the community from CollabNet and SWiK, SourceLabs’ open source listing service, but these have not sufficiently filled the open source repository and connections gap. Furtermore, while open source software development within projects is highly efficient and effective, the amount of cross-project and cross-product coordination and collaboration has been hampered by lack of a good place to do it.

But now there is a new breed of these digital community halls, designed to connect developers to other developers, users to other users, developers to users and all of them to projects and postings on support, features or favorite foods. The most recent addition to the repository race is OpenLogic Exchange (OLEX), the open source software and support provider’s free site for finding, researching and downloading commercial open source software. While limited to OpenLogic and its more than 300 certified software packages, the free site offers tools for open source policies and governance, and purchase of indemnification. We’ll see what develops from this new community repository described by OpenLogic as its knowledge library in SaaS form.

Another newer community site that acts as a nice cross-project meeting place is Ohloh. It aims to deepen visibility into open source software communities and development by highlighting individual projects and developers. The site includes information on their activity, popularity and more. Ohloh envisions a place for developers and users to collaborate across different software products, programs and projects.

There is also cross-project bug tracking and other work going on at Canonical’s Launchpad, another example of where we see wider, next-generation open source software development. Yet additional examples include Optaros and its Enterprise Open Source Directory (EOSD) and ITerating, a Wiki-based directory of open source and commercial software and reviews.

There has never been such opportunity to get to know open source software and the people and communities that create it. It’s yet another sign that this ‘new’ approach to software development and business is growing up.