The freshmeat[28] software index is one of the first stops for any software user or developer looking to find an OSS solution for a given problem. Projects register themselves with freshmeat and announce new releases as they occur. There are a number of specialized OSS indices that focus on particular programming languages or areas of interest, such as CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network)[29] for the Perl programming language[30], and the similarly acronymed CRAN[31] for the R programming language[32], and Statlib[33] for statistical software.
Dedicated bioinformatics indices exist, such as the Open Bioinformatics Foundation, the parent organization for the Bio-* projects[34], and the Open Lab[27].