Since the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, DirFile, FileDudes and Program URL (great if you’re looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).

I read David Jonathon’s article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads, Shareware Download, and Forte Downloads don’t advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available… if you know where to look.

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I was happily hanging out in the sysadmin room of a major ISP around here in Western Australia (no, I wasn’t meant to be there, if you really want to know!). Steve, the senior sysadmin in charge of the place, showed me a computer screen (running Vista, but I won’t comment on that) and said “Oh yeah, I’m sure you know about this…”. “Yeah, I know Google maps” I answered. He looked at me embarrassed. “Err… actually, we use Zenoss server monitoring here… look close. That’s our VPN!” It was a map of their server in Australia. There were green lines between them.