OpenTracker is the open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 version of the Tracker

Tracker (File manager)

Haiku Tracker is the File manager of the Haiku operating system. It is somewhat similar to Finder on Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, as Tracker is said to be quite familiar.Haiku Tracker is based on OpenTracker which in turn is based on Tracker found in the BeOS....

 file manager

File manager

A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to work with file systems. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files are: create, open, edit, view, print, play, rename, move, copy, delete, search/find, and modify file attributes, properties...

 for BeOS

BeOS

BeOS is an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing...

-compatible operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s.

Be Inc.

Be Inc.

Be Incorporated was an American computer company founded in 1990, best known for the Be Operating System and BeBox personal computer. Be was founded by former Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée with capital from Seymour Cray....

 developed the original Tracker for their operating system, BeOS. In 2000, prior to selling all of their assets to Palm, Inc.

Palm, Inc.

Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...

, Be Inc. open-sourced some of their software, including Tracker. The software license, called the Open Tracker License [sic], is an MIT License

MIT License

The MIT License is a free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . It is a permissive license, meaning that it permits reuse within proprietary software provided all copies of the licensed software include a copy of the MIT License terms...

 with two addenda restricting the use of Be Inc. trademark

Trademark

A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...

s.

Be Inc. hosted

Web hosting service

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet...

 OpenTracker until 2001. Before the dissolution

Dissolution (law)

In law, dissolution has multiple meanings.Dissolution is the last stage of liquidation, the process by which a company is brought to an end, and the assets and property of the company redistributed....

 of the corporation, both Be developers and outside volunteers contributed to Be's open-source software

Open-source software

Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...

 projects. With Be's dissolution imminent, prominent OpenTracker contributor Axel Dörfler oversaw the relocation of the OpenTracker project to SourceForge

SourceForge

SourceForge Enterprise Edition is a collaborative revision control and software development management system. It provides a front-end to a range of software development lifecycle services and integrates with a number of free software / open source software applications .While originally itself...

, and at the same time began a new software versioning scheme. Dörfler established the new software version at 5.1.0.

Some open-source software developers

Software developer

A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...

 continued to develop OpenTracker, while others forked

Fork (software development)

In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...

 the source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

 into novel variations. One such divergence, Tracker.NewFS, has distinctive source code for file system

File system

A file system is a means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device which contain it. A file system organizes data in an efficient manner and is tuned to the...

 operations, as well as support for SVG

Scalable Vector Graphics

Scalable Vector Graphics is a family of specifications of an XML-based file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and dynamic . The SVG specification is an open standard that has been under development by the World Wide Web Consortium since 1999.SVG images and their...

 icons. yellowTAB

YellowTAB

yellowTAB was a German software firm that produced an operating system called "yellowTAB ZETA". While the operating system was based on BeOS 5.1.0, the company never publicly confirmed that it has the BeOS source code or what their licensing agreement with BeOS's owners PalmSource was. The company...

, too, added support for SVG icons in their closed-source fork.

External links

• opentracker.be, OpenTracker official web site
• Tracker.NewFS, a derivative of OpenTracker