FileZilla

FileZilla, a secure FTP client, is an excellent open-source success story. The program was started two years ago in Germany by a computer science student named Tim Kosse. While working on his degree, Tim began to write a simple FTP program for a class assignment. After the class was completed, Tim continued to improve upon the code base. Eventually he chose to host it on SourceForge.net. With feedback and support from the SourceForge.net community, Tim's code and FileZilla's feature set continued to improve. Today, program has a thriving user base and a large community of devotees around the world. The project is now ranked in the top 15 projects (out of 70,000) on the site and has more than 4,000 downloads daily.