There are 4 open source projects that we need on the web. If these existed I could die a happy man. Hopefully we see some development in these area. Here they are:

1. Lightweight & Highly Extensible Shopping Cart

We all know of the big open source ecommerce platforms in the market. Magento, Zen Cart just to name a couple. But i’m talking about something truly lightweight and easy to use for the common user. Basically the “Wordpress” of the ecommerce world. This project would be licensed under the GPL so that it’s a true open source project unlike the others.

Because of this GPL license more people would contribute plugins to the core, giving the cart as much functionality as a Magento or Zen Cart.

2. Lightweight & Highly Extensible CRM

SugarCRM and vTiger CRM are the two big PHP web based CRM’s on the web today. They are great tools. But frankly they are way too big and heavy. Just like with the lightweight shopping cart that I talked about. This CRM would be the “Wordpress” of the CRM world. Easy to use. And licensed under the GPL to encourage a true open source community.

The core of the app would be very basic. And plugins could be easily built that could extend the functionality. Also the CRM would be very “Internet Marketer friendly.” An example would be to have built in a html form generator for easily placing forms on blogs and content pages that capture leads directly into the CRM.

3. Affiliate & MLM Application

Either one of these exist at all in the open source world currently. And I see these now as two applications that now are one because of the rise of Internet Marketing. An Affiliate App allows a marketing team to setup “Affiliates” and generate ad code that, through a cookie in the browser tracks sales/conversions from each specific affiliate. Affiliate applications are quite common, it’s just that none of them are open source.

An MLM application is a way to manage a “Downline”. These “Downlines” are for Multi-level marketers to be able to manage profits that are shared. I see this coinciding with Affiliate Marketing on the web, and by combining the two could make a powerful application!

4. Social Media Interaction Platform

These would be either a web app or a desktop app. The basic functionality of this app would be to import all your content from all your social media sites. And then through API’s to those 3rd party services, allow you to post updates, leave comments etc. to all social media sites through one application.

By making the app completely GPL you would have so many developers integrating plugins from various social media sites. This one would be GENIUS!!!

If any of you are interested in starting one of these projects leave a comment and let’s talk! If I don’t see some action in these 4 areas soon, i’m thinking of taking some initative. If for some reason I’ve been hiding under a rock somewhere and one of these open source projects already does exist, please let us all know!