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Per a post I put up back in February, I said that one of the biggest issues in blogging about open source software (OSS) is keeping track of the products, communities, and commercial backers. There's pretty much a one to one to one relationship among the three but that relationship is not always obvious.

Even for the simplest connections. For example, it's probably intuitive that the Mozilla portal is built by the Mozilla Foundation which is backed by the Mozilla Corporation. But it is probably not obvious that whole string really unravels all the way back through AOL to the original Netscape browser. As for something more convoluted but not unusual: the Sleepycat OSS database project is really a derivative of the Berkeley database that forked out of UNIX at System V time but the community is now backed by Oracle, which purchased Sleepycat in 2006.

Some OSS has a community but no commercial backing (such projects don't usually last too long). Others have commerical backing but no community. Sometimes, that is intentional and the product is really freeware rather than actual OSS. But in other cases, it is is because the project is just getting off the ground.

So, back in Feburary, I put together a scorecard to keep the players straight and just in time for baseball season I have updated that scorecard. It is available as a free download at my web site itinvestmentresearch.com (link from button to the right where it says "My Other Work"). I have notes so far on more than a dozen OSS applications (including SplendidCRM, about whom I posted this week and Compiere about whom I posted a few weeks ago), a half dozen OSS databases, a dozen pieces of OSS integration middleware, a half dozen OSS develolpment tools and toolsets, and nine pieces of OSS infrastructure. Other projects tied together for you if it will help include (but are not limited to) Jaspersoft, openoffice, Zimbra, jackrabbit, Geronimo, Celtix, Eclipse, Debian, Fedora and Xen.

Let me know if there are other OSS projects you would like to see added--yours or something you want me to research.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Culture |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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