Owner hive01 GmbH Commercial no | Created by Frank Karlitschek | |
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Type of site Content sharing website Slogan(s) Let's build the Desktop of the future Website | ||
openDesktop.org is a content sharing website with focus on the open source community. It centers on sharing of user generated contents such as applications and artwork under free and liberal licensing. openDesktop.org is one of the biggest online communities for sharing such content, serving the official KDE Store and more than 90 million page impressions per month. It's a home for more than 100.000 user generated contents and a place where developers, artists and users come together.
Contents
Content and Scope
Every visitor of openDesktop.org can freely download any content from the site, while registered users can upload self-created artwork such as comics, pictures, wallpapers, new icons or desktop themes or applications and add-ons that are released under a FOSS license. Users are able to up- or downvote content, comment on it and make donations. If they like a project, they can become a fan and subscribe to it to get informed about updates and new releases.
OCS API
openDesktop.org uses the Open Collaboration Services API, or short OCS API, which is a certified standard protocol of freedesktop.org. KDE SC 4 was the first project to make use of the OCS API. Nowadays KDE Plasma 5 and various KDE-applications use the OCS API via the KNewStuff framework.
Social Desktop
The social or community aspect of the portal has been a driving factor early on. According to the project site a well communicated community is necessary to improve the acceptance of open source and to grow market share of the Linux Desktop. Today the acceptance and public view of FLOSS projects and CC artwork is growing, as is the willingness to sustain quality content via donating to the creators of such content. The goal is to continue to grow this community of free software users and encourage them to support the creators via donations to make OpenDesktop.org a place, where everyone can freely join and meet people with the same passion for FOSS and CC content.
Growth and Statistics
In the beginning of December 2001, 2000 users were registered on the sites. About 0.8 million page impressions per month were made. A year later, in 2002 there were 6000 registered users and 3 million page impressions. Heavy growth for more than 8 years lead to more than 130.000 registered users from over 100 countries in 2009. Over 90 million page impressions per month are reached with more than 6 Terabytes traffic per month. 2.5 million people visit openDesktop.org every month.
History
The first website of the portal, KDE-Look.org, was started in the year 2001 by Frank Karlitschek. Shortly many similar sites with focus on other open source themes such as GNOME were launched. Today, more than 35 community sites are available. In 2007 the openDesktop.org got established as an umbrella page for the whole network that summarizes the content from the sites such as KDE-Look.org, GNOME-Look.org or Linux-Apps.com.
Today openDesktop.org is a global meeting place for open source and Linux enthusiasts from different countries. The websites get maintained by the hive01 GmbH, based in Bielefeld, Germany. In January 2016 Frank Karlitschek sold the company to Blue Systems GmbH.