The “open source” label was created back in 1998, not long after I got my start in tech publishing. Fast forward to late 2014, when I was thinking about how much open source technologies, communities, and business models have changed since 1998. I realized that there was no easy way—like a yearbook—to thumb through tech history to get a feel for open source.

Sure, you can flip through the virtual pages of a Google search and read the “Best of” lists collected by a variety of technical publications and writers, much like you can thumb through newspapers from the 1980s to see the how big we wore our shoulder pads, neon clothing, and hair back then. But neither research method is particularly efficient, nor do they provide snapshots that show diversity within communities and moments of time.

The idea behind the Open Source Yearbook is to collaborate with open source communities to collect a diverse range of stories from the year. We let the writers pick the criteria, which means the yearbook isn’t just full of the fastest, most popular, smartest, or best looking open source solutions. Instead, the yearbook offers a mix of open source solutions and projects, from a range of writers and communities, to offer a well-rounded (albeit incomplete) glimpse at what open source communities and projects looked like in 2015.