Hub projects in open source network management
Almost as a doodle I thought I’d create a graph depicting the dependencies between a selection of open source network management projects.
Once I’d done it, it occurred to me how much just about everything depends on just a couple of projects or project variants of, RRDTool & Net-SNMP.
The main conclusion I draw from the above graph is that if you wish to create a thriving platform for open source network management, you’d better have something like those two hub projects.
What is perhaps most surprising is not that there are hub projects, but that there are only two of them in the whole of network management. I think that there should be a lot more.
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Jack Hughes's wry observations of the tech industry from the bottom looking up. 
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Very Interesting diagram, the only thing that I would like point out here is that OpenNMS uses a Strategy design pattern where these management applications you show as dependencies are actually API implementations in OpenNMS. OpenNMS isn’t actually “dependent” on SNMP4J or RRDTool. We’ve developed SNMP and RRD APIs that allow JoeSNMP and JRobin (projects that we also maintain) to be used interchangeably with SNMP4J and RRDTool. So, we’ve written implementations of the API that allow you to use which ever combination works best for your environment.
I’m truly am thankful for the diagram, though
One thing that I should also show you someday, that would require a quite large diagram, is several dependencies that OpenNMS has on other Java based Open Source softwares that are not management related: Spring Framework, Hibernate, Jetty (kinda), Castor, Apache commons, SableCC, MX4J, PostgreSQL, Log4J, C3P0, GWT, and several more. Open Source software powered by Open Source.
Quote | Posted May 9, 2008, 2:47 amNice diagram Jack. I think what’s interesting is that this is a great illustration of the additive (not viral) nature of open source. We benefit from not only the ones in your diagram but Zope, MySQL and a bunch of other open source software.
What’s interesting for both us and the distinguished gents from Pittsboro is that we can leverage pieces of open source software so we can focus on what we both are specialists in, making very cool, free open source systems management software without having to spend time redeveloping the plumbing.
Quote | Posted May 12, 2008, 3:47 am