I Took a Look at the Tech Stack of Almost 500 Open-Source Companies

Hi y’all
I run a website that focuses on showcasing the best open-source companies. I recently analyzed the technologies used by each company. It was quite the task, but I managed to identify nearly 250 different programming languages, frameworks, and development tools.

You can check them out here: https://openalternative.co/stacks

Hope you enjoy it!

That sounds cool so far. But wouldn’t it be helpful to include some numbers related to each tech stack on your main page? It would give us a better overview for comparison.

Shan said:
That sounds cool so far. But wouldn’t it be helpful to include some numbers related to each tech stack on your main page? It would give us a better overview for comparison.

Good idea. I’ll add some counters for the tools. Right now, they are sorted by popularity, so you can see which ones are the most used.

Shan said:
That sounds cool so far. But wouldn’t it be helpful to include some numbers related to each tech stack on your main page? It would give us a better overview for comparison.

I’ve added counters for each tool. Is that enough or do you think I should include more details?

@Fox
That’s awesome! I think that’s what most people would love to see when first visiting that kind of page. Good job!

Wow, that’s impressive. I’m curious if you spotted any interesting trends or patterns in the tools or frameworks being used. Did anything surprise you? This is such a cool resource, thanks for sharing! I can’t wait to explore it.

@Zev
I haven’t had the time to analyze the results yet since this is my first time doing such a deep analysis. One trend that stands out, though, is that Next.js is currently the most popular framework, with over one-third of the tested repositories using it.

Why are multiple frameworks showing up as languages?

Morgan said:
Why are multiple frameworks showing up as languages?

You’re right, I didn’t notice that before. I’ll fix it soon.

Fox said:

Morgan said:
Why are multiple frameworks showing up as languages?

You’re right, I didn’t notice that before. I’ll fix it soon.

It should be corrected now!

@Fox
Node.js and Deno are still showing as languages.

Nuri said:
@Fox
Node.js and Deno are still showing as languages.

Well, those aren’t frameworks either, and I didn’t want to create a new category just for them.

Fox said:

Nuri said:
@Fox
Node.js and Deno are still showing as languages.

Well, those aren’t frameworks either, and I didn’t want to create a new category just for them.

These are runtimes. JavaScript is the actual language.

@Niko
Thanks for pointing that out. I know they are runtimes, but I was trying to keep the categories simple. Maybe I should consider adding more.

This is great, and I have a couple of suggestions:

  • When I click on a language or a framework, it would be helpful to see a short description of what the framework does.

  • I think it would be interesting to see who uses what technology, along with a timeline, so we could see if something is gaining or losing popularity. Knowing when a project started or when the first commit was could help.

  • Also, I’m job hunting, so links to open positions at these companies would be awesome.

Overall, nice job!

@Cameron
Great ideas! I’ll try to implement them when I can. Tracking trends is a bit tricky since I’d need to check the tech stacks regularly, but it could be really useful.

Fox said:
@Cameron
Great ideas! I’ll try to implement them when I can. Tracking trends is a bit tricky since I’d need to check the tech stacks regularly, but it could be really useful.

Wait, is this all manual data entry? I had imagined you’d just use some detection code over a repo URL to find the specific frameworks.

@Cameron
I didn’t say it’s manual. It’s automated, but the process is resource-heavy because I download the entire source code to analyze it. There might be more efficient ways, but this method worked best for me.

People are so obsessed with tech stacks nowadays.

Denny said:
People are so obsessed with tech stacks nowadays.

I agree, but sometimes it’s a good thing.