Winners of O'Reilly's COMDEX Contest Anounced

Alexander Limi writes: "The winners of the O'Reilly "Open Source Goes to COMDEX" Contest have been announced. The lucky ones are: GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice, Zope, GIMP and our own project, Plone. Congratulations to all the deserving projects! Check out the announcement here."

Comments

Number of votes?

[c_oflynn]

Top amount of votes was only 1690. Pretty good amount, but really I would expect more... I mean a slashdot poll had 20000 responses for the top choice!!

Not just name-recognition

[supton]

From a user who uses every piece of software on that list, I have to disagree.

Sure KDE was a winner - but number one in the vote tally was Plone. Why? Becuase Plone has a large, enthusiastic community. Plone is faily new in the grand scheme of things, compared to these other projects. Why Plone got the most votes is that it has a lot of the most "finishing work" of many projects - it will be a good ambassador for open-source products and frameworks.

Sure, the KDE, GIMP, GNOME, and OpenOffice folks have been around for a while, and obviously get in on both quality and recognition, but it's important to see that Zope and Plone also are getting a lot of deserved attention at the same level as these other four well-known open-source projects.

Re:Are people surprised?

[Narphorium]

While I agree with what you're saying, I think that these six projects are projects the people want to present as examples of how successful OSS can be.

If COMDEX were only about OSS, then I think the focus would be more on up-and-coming projects. However, open-source is still very much in the up-and-coming catagory itself and I think that this is a necessary step in order to bring OSS even more into the mainstream.

Excellent!

[mikemcc]

Excellent news. I've been using zope and plone for a few months now for intranet projects at my employer, and I am very, very impressed with that software stack. The plone 2.0 betas illustrate the the Plone team has some extremely talented UI people. I look forward to reading more about these technologies.

not just buzzwords!

[supton]

Make fun of "buzzwords" if you will, but getting open-source into government and private-enterprise that works with government is important, and lack of accessibility is a deal-breaker for those kinds of projects. Standards are important to doing business with technology - that's the process you go through to generate something called money (perhaps you've heard of this, no?).

Community enthusiasim is an important part....

[supton]

...of the development process. Projects with vibrant, enthusiastic communities will tend to exceed, both socially, and technically. This is one of Plone and Zope's greatest assets. So, if you think of it this way, it is more than a mere "popularity" contest - it is a measure of dedication, enthusiasm, caring, and a bit of zealotry (not in a bad way) - these are good leading indicators as the the strength of the product via its support mechanism and community.

Re:Community enthusiasim is an important part....

[zyridium]

Your point is my point -- that we need to improve the community around other projects, not the ones that already have them established.

a bit of zealotry (not in a bad way)

Zealotry is *always* bad IMHO. It is the most unprofessional attitute imaginable.

Dont mind me, I am trying to write an honours thesis :(

Innovation

[The Herbaliser]

I hate to say this, but two of the selections seem to have the primary purpose of duplicate functionality found in proprietary applications. Should we really be celebrating pieces of software that while powerful, really don't provide anything remotely new or original, and are basically knockoffs of MS and Adobe products (although OO's embrace of XML is kind of cool)?

It almost seems as though those two selections help to validate many of the criticisms that have been made regarding the open-source model: namely that it lacks true innovation. Many projects, including some of the selections prove such suggestions to be false. I just think it's a shame that projects have been included that have really contributed very little to the advancement of the field.

Re:Innovation

[Hylander]

I have to disagree with this. I've been using Zope and Plone for about six months now, and they have some of the most innovative stuff in them I have seen for a long time.

Seriously, go check them out. Once you're up to speed on Acquisition, ZODB Persistence, Zope Page Templates, Plone customisation and the rest of it, come back and tell me it's not innovative!

Seriously, this technology owns.

Re:You always know Unix-based free software ...

[Spoing]

If there's a list like, "And the winners are, Bink, Shputz, GBR (goober), _Splong_, VORKO, and Dwinky!"

You misspelled "Spoing". :)

But DON'T, for God's sake, tell fans of the products that they projects might benefit from name upgrades, nooo.

Agreed. One of my recient favorites is referred to as "DCL" at work. Calling it by it's full real name Double Choco Latte would not get any management sign off. DCL, though, sounds like a serious product. Though the logo for Double Choco Latte is nice, I've whipped up a replacement one; very booring, only text, in the corporate colors.

Recursive acronyms are great for geeky projects (geek is a positive, of course), though I hope fewer projects do this unless the users are only going to be geeks.

Here's my take on the names of the winning entries;

1. GNOME & KDE -- Both OK, but not great. The foot and gear logos are nice. That said, "Windows" and the "window" logo are pretty dumb. OSX and the Mac logos are damn nice.
2. OpenOffice -- Good and to the point; it's an office suite, and it's open.
3. Zope -- Cool; in a class like "Exxon". Zope is not a simple thing to explain, so it's OK that it's name does not mean anything intutitive.
4. GIMP -- Wilbur is a good logo/mascott, though the name requires explanation.
5. Plone -- Not cool like "Zope". Reminds me of "prone" (a sign of weakness) and "clone" (just another project).