Best Open Source Software for 2008

Best of open source in productivity applicationsAudacity, Sound Editing

See the winners of the Best Open Source Software awards for 2008

• Blender, 3D Modeling
• Firefox, Web Browser
• GIMP, Image Editing
• OpenOffice.org, Productivity Suite

• PDFCreator, PDF Creation

InfoWorld Test Center’s editors, analysts and reviewers had chosen 60 products for the eight Bossies categories of the recently held Best of Open Source Awards 2008. The celebration of the best free software of today for business, IT staff and respective employee’s workstations marks another recognition of open-source’s continuous drive for improvement, stability and usability.

Among the easy picks for this year’s winners were OpenOffice.org for office productivity suite, Snort for network intrusion detection, and Splunk for security log analysis. Although, these applications were already believed to be solutions ahead of their competition, InfoWorld’s editors, analysts, reviewers really had a difficult time choosing between other solutions in all eight categories that included the following: enterprise applications such as CRM, ERP, BI, and reporting; collaborative applications, including mail/calendar, wiki, and social networking; desktop productivity apps from office suites to 3-D modeling; platforms and middleware, including operating systems, databases, virtualization, and SOA integration; developer tools from AJAX and rich Internet apps to Web service testing and version control; networking, including server monitoring, routing, Wi-Fi scanning, and VoIP software; security software, including firewall, IDS, disk encryption, and security testing;  and storage which includes monitoring and administration, backup, and NAS.

InfoWorld admitted that the development of the products were remarkable and were evolving incredibly fast. Even with the repeat champions like Sugar, Alfresco and Asterisk which were winners of last year’s Bossie Awards, the products featured considerable flexibility to the new demands of development.

Three sun products won the awards in two different categories:  My SQL as best database and the recently acquired VirtualBox as best desktop virtualization both under the Best of Open Source Platforms and Middle category and OpenOffice.org as best productivity suite under Best of Open Source Productivity Apps category.

InfoWorld editors noted MySQL’s outstanding read performance, transparent support for binary objects and large text, and amazingly easy administration as well as the helpful user-base that made it deserving for the award. VirtualBox on the other hand, won due to its operating system support and faultless windows support. Thanks to its pioneering capability to be available for both Linux and Windows, it stomped its other competitors futile. As for OpenOffice.org, it has been unanimously chosen branding it to be the granddaddy of all MS Office alternatives. Undisputedly, OpenOffice.org has been the choice of productivity apps by most students, ordinary PC users and even bigger corporations because of its compatibility with a variety of operating systems.

Another noteworthy selection was the JavaScript framework, Prototype. Originally developed by Sam Stephenson, it has proved to be effective in its goal of a more object-oriented JavaScript writing and easier but less breakable manipulation of Document Object Model (DOM). The judges noted that its superiority from Dojo, Google Web Toolkit and Yahoo User Interface, was due in part of its powerful schemes to JavaScript while insulating users’ own JavaScript code from unavoidable browser dependencies.

A partial list of the winners as listed in the InfoWorld website is as follows:

Best of open source in productivity applications

• Audacity, Sound Editing
• Blender, 3D Modeling
• Firefox, Web Browser
• GIMP, Image Editing
• OpenOffice.org, Productivity Suite

• PDFCreator, PDF Creation

Best of open source in enterprise applications

• Alfresco Community, Content Management
• Compiere, Enterprise Resource Planning
• dotProject, Project Management
• Hyperic HQ, Application Monitoring
• Intalio BPMS, Business Process Management
• JasperReports, Reporting
• Liferay Portal, Enterprise Portal
• Magento eCommerce, E-Commerce
• Pentaho Open BI Suite, Business Intelligence

• SugarCRM, Customer Relationship Management

Best of open source in collaboration

• Elgg, Social Networking
• MediaWiki, Wiki
• VNC and Chicken of the VNC, Remote Control
• Scalix, Mail and Calendar

• WordPress, Blog Publishing

Best of open source in networking

• Asterisk, IP Telephony
• AWStats, Log File Analyzer
• InSSIDer, Wireless Network Scanner
• Nagios, Server Monitoring
• NDISwrapper, Wireless Network Interface
• Vyatta, Router, Firewall, & VPN
• Wireshark, Network Protocol Analyzer

• Zenoss Core, Network Monitoring

Best of open source in platforms and middleware

• CentOS, Server Operating System
• JBossESB, Enterprise Service Bus
• MySQL, Database
• phpMyAdmin, MySQL Administration
• Puppy Linux, Small-Footprint OS
• Talend Open Studio, Data Integration
• Ubuntu, Desktop Operating System
• VirtualBox, Desktop Virtualization

• Xen, Server Virtualization

Best of open source in security

• AppArmor, Application Security
• Metasploit Framework, Penetration Toolkit
• Ophcrack, Password Cracker
• SmoothWall Express, Network Firewall
• Snort with BASE, Network Intrusion Detection
• Splunk, Security Log Analysis
• TrueCrypt, Disk Encryption

• Untangle Gateway Platform, Gateway Security

For complete coverage and the rest of the winners see the article at InfoWold.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/04/32TC-bossies-2008_1.html

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