Great open source apps for the Mac

The Open Source Mac site is a great thing. I don’t even care if they’re just doing it for the Adsense clicks – though I’m pretty sure they’re not. They’ve built a simple site devoted to “the best, most important, and easiest to use” open source desktop applications for OS X. These are popular, and popularizable, apps like Camino, Adium, VLC, and Cyberduck.

They understand the subtle wisdom that, besides being useful and OSI-compliant, a successful open source desktop application needs two things: a cool icon and a big obvious download button. (And you know I like big obvious download buttons.)

Their choices are generally excellent. I regularly use at least eight of the apps they list, and I’ve even contributed a little code to one or two.

This is the kind of site you can share with someone who is a Mac enthusiast but doesn’t necessarily have the Developer Tools or X11 installed. It gently evangelizes everyday, nontechnical, useful-right-now open source software.

(In case their two pages aren’t enough for you, here are two bonus links: Apple’s Unix & Open Source Downloads and FreeSMUG.)