DISCLAIMER: This ranking list is an ongoing work-in-progress and was inspired in part by Two Sigma’s Open Source Index and GitHub’s Trending. It is not some kind of official ranking and is for educational purposes only (my own!). This initial ranking has some known issues that need to be addressed including but not limited to: 1) the model and ranking has a bias for older established projects with a longer history of activity, 2) manual data cleaning was necessary to exclude certain types of projects which is error prone, 3) the “commercial viability” measure is too simple, 4) how OSS projects that already have a commercial model should be handled and whether or not they should be excluded altogether.
Ranking Methodology
The goal for this exploration is to identify active, popular open source projects and rank them by commercial viability. This does not mean that open source projects should or need to be commercially viable (some projects ranked here already have a commercial model) but I think it is an interesting way to look at things because it could be a potential indicator of long-term success as well. The data was collected using Github’s REST and GraphQL APIs.
Here are the primary inputs to the first version of this model:
Stars: Total number of stars the repository has received, indicating general popularity.
Forks: Total number of forks, representing how many times the repository has been copied to start independent development.
Open Issues: Total number of open issues from the community of its users.
Pull Requests Merged (Last 30 Days): Number of pull requests merged in the last 30 days, an indicator of growth through contributions and active usage.
Commits (Last 30 Days): Number of commits made in the last 30 days, demonstrating ongoing development and maintenance.
Recent Stars (Last 30 Days): Number of stars received in the last 30 days, indicating recent interest and popularity.
Recent Contributors (Last 90 Days): Number of unique contributors in the last 90 days, indicating community engagement and adoption.
Usage License: Only repositories with commercialization-friendly licenses (MIT, Apache 2.0, BSD-2-Clause, BSD-3-Clause) are included.
Star Growth Rate (experimental): Calculated as the percentage increase in stars over the past 90 days.
Kelly Fraction (experimental): A calculated value using the Kelly Criterion to determine the optimal investment size based on a commercial viability score.
Scoring Weights: Stars=0.05, Forks=0.10, Open Issues=0.05, Pull Requests Merged=0.40, Commits=0.10, Recent Stars=0.10, Recent Contributors=0.15, Star Growth Rate=0.05
Top 20 Repositories Ranked by Commercial Viability
Raw Repository Data
| Repository | Score | Stars | Forks | Open Issues | Pull Requests Merged (Last 30 Days) | Commits (Last 30 Days) | Recent Stars (Last 30 Days) | Recent Contributors (Last 90 Days) | Star Growth Rate (Last 90 Days) | Kelly Fraction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| kubernetes | 55.38 | 107962 | 38769 | 1850 | 58586 | 1307 | 14 | 353 | 0.01% | 0.33 |
| flutter | 45.43 | 162825 | 26782 | 12529 | 37746 | 1340 | 12 | 385 | 0.01% | 0.18 |
| godot | 43.57 | 85861 | 19011 | 10212 | 32802 | 2516 | 18 | 463 | 0.02% | 0.15 |
| next.js | 25.98 | 122346 | 26187 | 2786 | 17286 | 1109 | 22 | 435 | 0.02% | -0.11 |
| material-ui | 24.10 | 92239 | 31753 | 1664 | 18370 | 575 | 24 | 420 | 0.03% | -0.14 |
| react | 23.43 | 224388 | 45731 | 761 | 10273 | 704 | 116 | 416 | 0.05% | -0.15 |
| ant-design | 22.31 | 90782 | 47178 | 1058 | 13779 | 563 | 18 | 371 | 0.02% | -0.17 |
| bootstrap | 22.24 | 167908 | 78510 | 432 | 8728 | 52 | 111 | 361 | 0.07% | -0.17 |
| bitcoin | 21.39 | 76943 | 35540 | 374 | 14130 | 823 | 29 | 349 | 0.04% | -0.18 |
| electron | 21.30 | 112508 | 15077 | 879 | 19517 | 229 | 36 | 383 | 0.03% | -0.18 |
| opencv | 21.04 | 76582 | 55639 | 2456 | 12137 | 326 | 68 | 281 | 0.09% | -0.18 |
| langchain | 20.68 | 87620 | 13685 | 734 | 10219 | 1729 | 62 | 475 | 0.07% | -0.19 |
| three.js | 19.70 | 99992 | 35176 | 373 | 12505 | 535 | 101 | 363 | 0.10% | -0.2 |
| storybook | 18.61 | 83243 | 9083 | 1791 | 9920 | 1484 | 25 | 370 | 0.03% | -0.22 |
| deno | 15.67 | 93285 | 5170 | 1859 | 10745 | 568 | 27 | 435 | 0.03% | -0.26 |
| django | 14.80 | 77629 | 31132 | 0 | 8979 | 154 | 69 | 395 | 0.09% | -0.28 |
| angular | 13.39 | 95016 | 24864 | 1338 | 3569 | 715 | 27 | 385 | 0.03% | -0.3 |
| AutoGPT | 13.37 | 163198 | 43247 | 64 | 1597 | 120 | 109 | 440 | 0.07% | -0.3 |
| react-native | 12.67 | 116725 | 24043 | 612 | 827 | 1086 | 30 | 315 | 0.03% | -0.31 |
| ohmyzsh | 12.08 | 170253 | 25673 | 126 | 3157 | 118 | 183 | 391 | 0.11% | -0.32 |
| vue | 11.97 | 207283 | 33626 | 356 | 1135 | 2 | 184 | 358 | 0.09% | -0.32 |
| PowerToys | 11.76 | 106584 | 6270 | 5826 | 4680 | 142 | 68 | 418 | 0.06% | -0.32 |
| puppeteer | 10.17 | 87477 | 9023 | 271 | 4589 | 283 | 44 | 453 | 0.05% | -0.35 |
| svelte | 10.13 | 77176 | 4019 | 789 | 4183 | 562 | 45 | 417 | 0.06% | -0.35 |
| terminal | 9.18 | 94061 | 8128 | 1490 | 3720 | 151 | 65 | 387 | 0.07% | -0.35 |
| laravel | 8.30 | 77279 | 23894 | 0 | 1575 | 18 | 200 | 397 | 0.26% | -0.35 |
| tauri | 7.99 | 79133 | 2347 | 822 | 4040 | 185 | 148 | 351 | 0.19% | -0.35 |
| excalidraw | 7.36 | 75972 | 6907 | 1379 | 3352 | 70 | 193 | 277 | 0.25% | -0.35 |
| axios | 7.09 | 104465 | 10752 | 579 | 841 | 20 | 182 | 418 | 0.17% | -0.35 |
| gin | 6.26 | 76456 | 7891 | 589 | 1022 | 35 | 242 | 411 | 0.32% | -0.35 |
| tailwindcss | 5.57 | 79934 | 4024 | 23 | 2097 | 64 | 216 | 262 | 0.27% | -0.35 |
| nvm | 5.43 | 76883 | 7725 | 318 | 705 | 7 | 222 | 347 | 0.29% | -0.35 |
| mall | 5.41 | 76253 | 28478 | 22 | 1 | 10 | 235 | 1 | 0.31% | -0.35 |
| scrcpy | 5.18 | 104562 | 10173 | 1829 | 78 | 4 | 224 | 124 | 0.21% | -0.35 |
| frp | 4.62 | 81582 | 12841 | 63 | 615 | 24 | 209 | 101 | 0.26% | -0.35 |