Freecode, formerly Freshmeat, is a website

Website

A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

 owned by Geeknet

Geeknet

Geeknet, Inc. is a Mountain View, California company that owns several computer tech-related websites and the online retailer ThinkGeek. Formerly known as VA Research, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, and SourceForge, Inc., it was founded in 1993.-VA Research:VA Research was founded in November...

 that allows computer users to keep track of the latest software releases and updates as well as write/read reviews and articles, send or receive comments to or from the author, and many other features. A majority of the software covered is 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...

 for Unix-like

Unix-like

A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....

 systems, although Freecode also covers releases of closed-source, commercial and cross-platform software on OS X and handhelds. Freecode is notable for its age, having started in 1998 as the first web-based aggregator of software releases

The site was renamed from "Freshmeat" to "Freecode" on October 29, 2011.

Submissions

Programmers register their projects and inform the site about updates; users browse for software and download and (sometimes) rate or comment on the software. Software is categorized by field of application, license, development status, environment, intended audience, type of use, supported 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, and used programming

Programming language

A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....

 and available natural languages. There is an NNTP

Network News Transfer Protocol

The Network News Transfer Protocol is an Internet application protocol used for transporting Usenet news articles between news servers and for reading and posting articles by end user client applications...

 server for usenet-like access and complex search queries can be saved, and new or updated entries that match the query can be sent as daily e-mail notifications.

Features

Freecode offers a news ticker stream, a daily newsletter, articles on Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 software-related topics and an IRC channel.

Freecode's entire database of software releases is freely available as a download, for such purposes as having a local database copy.