Free Software by François Rouaix
 
Web.Remote Event Feed

The Web.Remote (a.k.a InterAct SV-2020) is an infra-red remote control with a small keyboard and a trackball. In practice, this means that it provides a cordless handheld mouse with several buttons. I wanted to use it for a personal project that involved an old IBM network station (some type of living-room framed network photo and information display). Thus, instead of trying to figure out how to make the remote appear as a mouse through driver (kernel or X), I chose to write a simple application.
This software is an application (for Unix platforms) that reads the data from the serial port where the Web.Remote is connected, and synthesizes X-Windows events and feeds them to the display of your choice. Depending on where the base station is connected, it can be used as a second mouse on a regular system, or as a mouse for an X-terminal.
  1. Platform: Unix
  2. License: GPL
  3. Language: C
 
Philips DSS Sound Volume Control

This set of USB Digital Speakers comes with a small control pad with volume control.
The software is an application (for Linux platforms) that reads the data from the USB device where the speakers are connected, and transmits the volume control changes to the sound device.

 
  1. Platform: Unix
  2. License: GPL
  3. Language: C
 
 
Bit Rot
The following is old and obsolete software; it is still available, but I wouldn't recommend trying to compile or run it. However, the source may still be of interest, as these are rather large applications.
 
 V6 Web proxy
V6 was written in 1995/1996 as an experiment : assume that most of your daily computer activity is based on Web browsing. How do you provide browser-independent tools to help you in your activity ? Our answer was to use a "personal programmable proxy", where you can plug components easily. Some of the components that I implemented where : caching, history, on-the-fly full text indexing, banner ad removal.
The software is not maintained, probably does not compile any more. Some of the features that V6 had are sometimes available as extension to popular browsers (e.g. Explorer or Navigator). Given the utter dominance of  Microsoft Explorer and Firefox, the best course for implementing those ideas today (for the general public) would be to use the various extension frameworks on IE (BHO, scripting, ...) or Firefox (XUL addon, GreaseMonkey, etc.).
  1. Platform: Unix
  2. License: Free Software, Copyright INRIA
  3. Language: Objective Caml
 
 MMM Web Browser
MMM was written in 1994/1997, in the days when writing a Web browser was relatively simple, and could be done by one person. It supported essentially HTML 2.0, with some features of HTML 3.2, but choked on tables. The most interesting aspect of MMM was the support for Caml applets.
The software was partially maintained at INRIA by Jun Furuse.
  1. Platform: Unix
  2. License: Free Software, Copyright INRIA
  3. Language: Objective Caml
 
Hacks
These are small hacks written for specific hardware or occasions, that you may need if you own the same hardware or find yourself in the same situation.