Are the best open source software applications being used?
InfoWorld put out their 2008 Best of Open Source Software Awards (BOSSIES) and SourceForge put out their Community Choice Awards. I thought it would be interesting to see how prevalant these products were in the Open Source Census findings.
Not all the projects had fingerprints in Open Source Census so I just focused on those that did. I am not trying to make any statistically significant statements here, I was just curious. (I think to make statistically significant claims you'd have to look at the rest of the data, know if it's a server application, compare it to other data, etc. All the stuff that IDC and the Census will do before they release reports.)
The number is the prevalance number, the percentage of scans submitted to the Open Source Census with that package installed on the scanned machine.
From BOSSIES:
Application development:
- Prototype, JavaScript Framework 56.7%
- HttpClient, Web Client Library 30.48%
- JBoss Drools, Business Rule Management System 0.38%
Best of open source in productivity applications
- Firefox, Web Browser 83.73%
- OpenOffice.org, Productivity Suite 45.44%
- GIMP, Image Editing 33.67%
- Audacity, Sound Editing 10.31%
- Blender, 3D Modeling 3.34%
Collaboration:
- WordPress, Blog Publishing 4.33%
- MediaWiki, Wiki 3.23%
Networking:
- Wireshark, Network Protocol Analyzer 16.48%
- Nagios, Server Monitoring 5.06%
Platforms and middleware:
- MySQL, Database 27.41%
- VirtualBox, Desktop Virtualization 18.38%
- phpMyAdmin, MySQL Administration 6.46%
From the Community Awards:
- Best Project: OpenOffice.org 45.44%
- Best Project for the Enterprise: OpenOffice.org 45.44%
- Best Project for Education: OpenOffice.org 45.44%
- Most Likely to Be the Next $1B Acquisition: phpMyAdmin 6.46%
- Best Tool or Utility for SysAdmins: phpMyAdmin 6.46%




InfoWorld is smart enough to use a slideshow to present its awards. What total genius!