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Yesterday, we published the Optaros Open Source Catalog 2007 with 262 open source projects and products. And we’ve gotten a really good response with lots of feedback, suggestions, and a few corrections to make. If you have any feedback feel free to leave it here or send it to oss-catalogue@optaros.com

Our goal with this listing was to create a resource that companies could use to get a sense of what is available and help identify projects that they should consider. We certainly had a lot of debates internally about the ratings for different projects and which ones should or shouldn’t make the list. One thing that is true for every project that is included is that it is something that is worthy of being considered for enterprise use.

A big debate we had was where to draw the line regarding what qualifies as open source and whether to include commercial software. Many of the projects use licenses that would not qualify as OSI-certified licenses. Also, many commercial offerings (such as Red Hat Enterprise) are not an open source license but are related to open source and something we think IT decision makers should be aware of. We decided in the end to include both OSI-certified licenses and non-certifed (or even certifiable) licenses for completeness.

Another challenge we faced and still are struggling with is how to keep this resource up-to-date. Already some of the projects we reviewed have released new versions and or have experienced rapid adoption. Based on feedback we’ll publish a new revision shortly. And we are debating turning the Catalogue into something more wiki-like in order to make it easier to take feedback and make updates. However, we don’t want it to turn into a flame-war zone so we’re thinking about ways to keep the editorial context.

If you have any feedback or suggestions I would love to hear it.

Last month I presented a webinar on the Top 10 Events and Trends in Open Source for 2006. You can view the recorded webinar at the webinars page of the Optaros web site, but here’s the quick version:

• New Events and Vendor Announcments
  • Red Hat, JBoss, and Oracle announcements – Red Hat bought JBoss and Oracle announced a Red Hat support offering. These announcements to create suites and stacks of product offerings reflect customers’ desire for one-stop shopping.
  • Sun open sources of Java – Sun chose the GPL for Java. The license change will drive innovation and affect open source usage policies at many large companies.
  • Microsoft "partners" with Linux – Microsoft and Novell announced a series of agreements. This announcement is a drastic change in Microsoft’s position regarding Linux.
  • Very little legal news – It was significant how little legal news happened this year in relation to the level of concern people have.
• Activity up and down the stack:
  • Business applications entering mainstream – Open source CMS, CRM, and BI products gained interest from large enterprises and analysts. Many product evaluations in these areas now include open source offerings.
  • Key desktop applications hit their strides – Firefox, Eclipse, and OpenOffice.org now match or exceed their non-open-source equivalents in functionality.
  • Frameworks cross-pollinating – Ideas, innovations, and best practices spread rapidly between different projects and languages in 2006. Proprietary frameworks struggle to keep up.
• Community and Standards
  • Governments, standards, and community activities – Governments at the city, state, and country levels continued their strategic use of open source.
  • OpenDocument format prevails – The OpenDocument Format became an ISO standard and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts drove efforts to make migration easier.
  • Emerging issues around open source – Work began on a number of issues related to open source including patents, standards, and data.

And what year-in-review is complete without some predictions. Here is what I think will happen in 2007.

• Vista upgrade cycle will drive open source evaluations beyond the OS – Open source evaluations will happen regarding content management solutions (CMS) and office suites in addition to Vista vs. Linux evaluations.
• Continued CMS consolidation as open source software rolls through – Large commercial content management vendors will continue to acquire smaller vendors and start to acquire open source projects.
• Enterprises will be pushed through the open source adoption lifecycle – Evaluating open source options will become the norm for any product evaluation process. Open source software will appear regularly on "approved vendor" lists.
• Next Generation Internet applications will be driven by open source – As enterprises explore how to adopt Web 2.0 and other emerging trends, they will find the best partner in open source.
• $100 laptop brings world-wide attention and millions of users – Millions of new users will lead to thousands of new developers as children around the world explore their new laptops.

Also related the the Massachusetts ODF decision, Mass High Tech has publish a column I wrote entitled “ODF and the benefits of going open source.” The article describes three ways open source and collaborative development practices helped the Commonwealth of Massachusetts settle on OpenDocument Format for their new standard.