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Bossie Awards Honor Open Source Software

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the something-for-everyone dept.

The Alliance writes "InfoWorld has announced the 2007 Bossie Awards for the Best of Open-Source Software. Awards were given to 36 winners across 6 categories. Honorees include (among others) SpamAssassin, ClamAV and Nessus in security, Wireshark and Azureus Vuze in networking, and ZFS for storage. Interestingly, they split the operating system winners across two distributions, with CentOS winning for server OS and Ubuntu for desktop."

66 comments

  1. This is all well and good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But who won the "Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence"?

    1. Re:This is all well and good by flewp · · Score: 1

      But who won the "Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence"? Why, Calc of course, for it's work in the feature length production, "Open Office".
      --
      WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
  2. CentOS? by lgarner · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Interesting that CentOS won for server OS. Shouldn't that go to RHEL?

    1. Re:CentOS? by strredwolf · · Score: 0

      More like disappointing, given that it's RH/RPM based and it's a headache to maintain.

      --

      --
      # Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
      $Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
    2. Re:CentOS? by moderatorrater · · Score: 1

      The complaint I've heard about RHEL is that it doesn't send out security updates fast enough, sometimes taking weeks to distribute critical fixes.

    3. Re:CentOS? by dami99 · · Score: 0

      If I worked for Redhat I'd be feeling more than a little ripped off about that.

      Sounds like they picked it because it doesn't need support contracts. (From a quick read of the relevant area of the site).

    4. Re:CentOS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Shouldn't that go to RHEL?"

      From CentOS's website:

      "CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor."

      So, indirectly, it is RHEL. And I guess "prominent North American" would narrowed it down to two companies. But I don't see why they just flat out say RHEL.

    5. Re:CentOS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Actually, RHEL won and Centos just made a copy of the award and changed its name.

    6. Re:CentOS? by ForumTroll · · Score: 1

      I have several servers running a wide variety of services on CentOS, and after several years of constant use I have yet to have any problems. In fact, I'd say that they're incredibly easy to maintain.

      --
      "A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing." - Alan Perlis
    7. Re:CentOS? by RealSurreal · · Score: 3, Informative

      Trademarks. You can use RH code under the GPL but they don't let you use their trademarks.

    8. Re:CentOS? by Kelson · · Score: 3, Informative

      More like disappointing, given that it's RH/RPM based and it's a headache to maintain.

      Huh? What's so headachy about running "yum update" once in a while?

    9. Re:CentOS? by cool_arrow · · Score: 1

      #yum update Yeah that one was real tough.

    10. Re:CentOS? by dropadrop · · Score: 1

      I don't find it a pain to maintain, and have been responsible for hundreds of RHEL / Centos machines during the last two years.

      If you are forced to run a supported distro on several servers to get application support it can be nice to have a similar distro (for free) on your other servers.

      It's really a pain to maintain shitloads of different distributions. RPM's are much easier to live with.

    11. Re:CentOS? by jmyers · · Score: 1

      from TFA
      "CentOS is RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), after all, just packaged under a different name, and without any references to Red Hat. That means you can install applications for RHEL on a CentOS server without any incompatibilities, and all RHEL updates are applicable to CentOS as well. Obviously, no support contracts are available for CentOS, but that's the draw for many Linux veterans - the familiar Red Hat distribution, including updates, without the onus of having to purchase a support contract that is never used."

      So they are giving the award to CentOS because it doesn't come with support. Thats a new twist on a product award.

    12. Re:CentOS? by tacocat · · Score: 1

      I went back through this list and looked at some of the stuff that won and some of the things that didn't. I'm pretty much disappointed with the philosophy of the list. Seems that the Best of Open Source Software is not determined by any kind of technical merits but the popular opinion of the software at hand.

      There are a lot of company products mentioned as winners which means they are always working under a shadow.

      Fundamentally, I do not believe CentOS should be the server winner for the simple reason that RPM is not a very good package system in this century. There are much better alternatives and considering that Ubuntu won for the desktop I would have expected Debian to be a much better choice for the Server for many of the reasons that Ubuntu won, with the added incentive that it's focus is on reliability, ease of maintenance and lower TCO.

      And I'm getting pretty tired of everyone spouting off about how wonderful SpamAssassin is. It too is last century technology in spam filtering and is a tremendous resource pig for what it does. Bogofilter, in many ways, is far superior. And any bayesian spam filter today can run circles around SpamAssassin both in any performance measure and accuracy.

      I can't help wonder how much coincidence there is between these winners and the corporate sponsorship that they each have.

    13. Re:CentOS? by zx-15 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      yum update is not generally headachy, it is only headachy when it breaks

    14. Re:CentOS? by billcopc · · Score: 1

      I hemmed and hawed the first time I had to deal with CentOS, mainly because I hate RedHat with a passion. Now I'm not "in love" with CentOS, but all I can say is that it works, it's rather easy and comfy to maintain, and there's a wealth of 3rd party repositories out there to fill in gaps in the software collection.

      And "yum update" breaks a lot less than "apt-get dist-upgrade" or "emerge -uavDN world". A LOT less.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    15. Re:CentOS? by the_womble · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I do not believe CentOS should be the server winner for the simple reason that RPM is not a very good package system in this century.
      What exactly is wrong with RPM per se? The disadvantages of rpm + urpmi against deb + apt are the lack of suggests recommends functionality, and that the GUIs are not as good as Synaptic.

      These are problems with the layer above (apt or urpmi) rather than the package format.

      I have no idea how yum, Smart or rpm + deb compares because I have not used them, but the latter would solve the problem with the GUI.

      ... Ubuntu won, with the added incentive that it's focus is on reliability, ease of maintenance and lower TCO.
      You mean:

      ... Ubuntu won, with the added incentive that it's focus is on brilliant PR.

      I really do not see what is so good about Ubuntu. I used both Ubuntu and Kubuntu for about an year. I loved installing software in Synaptic, but that was really all there was to like. I switched back to Mandriva which is much easier to configure.

    16. Re:CentOS? by MadMidnightBomber · · Score: 1

      You can run a GUI on my server when you pry the root password from my cold, dead fingers.

      --
      "It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
    17. Re:CentOS? by tacocat · · Score: 1

      Thank you. And that is one of the reasons I think Debian should have won.

      At least with Debian you can readily install a Window Manager that is small and lightweight enough that it would hog up all the available resources of your machine.

    18. Re:CentOS? by Milalwi · · Score: 1


      yum update is not generally headachy, it is only headachy when it breaks


      Everything is headachy when it breaks.

      I've been using RHEL at work and CentOS at home for seven and three years, respectively. Up2date (RHEL3's updater) has only broken once, and was relatively easily repaired. Yum hasn't broken on me yet.

      Milalwi
    19. Re:CentOS? by ReinoutS · · Score: 1

      I heard that suggests-functionality has been added to urpmi recently.

  3. Open source awards give awards to Open Source... by happy_place · · Score: 1, Interesting

    "Interestingly, they split the operating system winners across two distributions, with CentOS winning for server OS and Ubuntu for desktop" *Raising hand...* Um... exactly how is that interesting? --Ray

    --
    http://www.beanleafpress.com
  4. [Dead Tree Magazine] Announces [Award]... by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    [Dead Tree Magazine] Announces [Award]...


    In the [Dead Tree Magazine] world, you'll usually find that the number of [Award]s a product gets is related to the dollar value of ads that product places in that magazine. "Secure Computing" magazine is still today a classic example of this premise.
    1. Re:[Dead Tree Magazine] Announces [Award]... by routerl · · Score: 1

      Perhaps. But does Ubuntu even have an advertising budget?

      --
      Trust me, kids; don't drink and post.
    2. Re:[Dead Tree Magazine] Announces [Award]... by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 2, Insightful

      does Ubuntu even have an advertising budget?


      I think that's a "yes".

      They do have a commercial entity that accepts and disburses cash:
      http://www.ubuntu.com/aboutus

      Also, there've been billboards and such...
      http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-6109379-7.html ...and don't forget the four-color printed commercial-quality cardboard boxes with ready-to-install Ubuntu disks - giveaways in an attractive package is a classic advertising gimmick.
    3. Re:[Dead Tree Magazine] Announces [Award]... by dskoll · · Score: 1

      InfoWorld used to be a Dead Tree Magazine, but they stopped killing trees and went Web-only a few months back.

    4. Re:[Dead Tree Magazine] Announces [Award]... by jmyers · · Score: 2, Informative

      How about CentOS, see the thread about CentOS vs RHEL. I mean CentOS is just a direct copy of the Red Hat product. If anything the award is just a dig at Red Hat which if not an advertiser is a potential advertiser.

    5. Re:[Dead Tree Magazine] Announces [Award]... by Etyenne · · Score: 1

      Outside the billboard (only one, and then only for a few weeks) and the ShipIt program, they have done no advertising whatsoever. I never saw an ad in a printed magazine or on a web site. You are welcome to prove me wrong if I missed something ...

      --
      :wq
    6. Re:[Dead Tree Magazine] Announces [Award]... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well shit, I'm stomped! If one overlooks their limited advertising... Then one could say that they don't advertise! You are free to prove me wrong, but once i go 'outside' that, then you're wrong again!

  5. Re:Trisexuals by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 0, Troll

    slut

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  6. Re:Open source awards give awards to Open Source.. by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 1

    It's interesting because previously OS winners weren't split like that. It's also interesting because CentOS and Ubuntu are two completely different distributions, yet both are community-maintained and supported.

    --
    My blog
  7. Re:Open source awards give awards to Open Source.. by athdemo · · Score: 1

    Oh come on, who modded this as interesting? The pun is too much.

  8. Nessus as open source by jmauro · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nessus is a funny one since it's no longer open source.

    1. Re:Nessus as open source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And Vuze has BBC content protected by DRM, meaning that while the software itself is open source there's still some shenanigans afoot.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuze

    2. Re:Nessus as open source by Arkaic · · Score: 1

      There is still an open source version of Nessus which is maintained and updated. From the article to which you linked:
      "Deraison said the existing version 2 of Nessus would continue to be available under the GPL license and receive bug fixes and regular updates. The large library of plug-ins to the software would also continue to distributed in a way that would allow parties to examine their source code."

  9. interesting split of winners by icepick72 · · Score: 1

    Hey, more interestingly they should split the winners between amounts of infringing code. ta-ching!

  10. Re:Open source awards give awards to Open Source.. by Rakishi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I find it MORE interesting that both CentOS and Ubuntu are not purely community based entities. CentOS is pretty much RHEL which is of course a commercial linux distribution. Ubuntu is heavily backed/sponsored by a private corporation.

  11. Bossy for Games? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When there is a Bossy for a high quality popular OSS game it will be a sure sign that OSS has "arrived". Note, everything there is has most of its value on the IT side, closest thing to a Joe Sixpack ap I see is Azureus Vuze.

    Disclaimer: Haven't read the entire article, just the summary and the category list on the linked awards site. Going to read more now.

  12. And SuSE was awarded best Linux Desktop? by kandresen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There seem to be some inconsistencies in the awards, under the open source awards, Ubuntu win best client operating system award, but under best platforms, SuSE linux Enterprise wins the Best Linux Desktop award.

    Best Client Operating System Award:
    http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/2007/09/114-best_of_open_so-3.html

    Best Linux Desktop Award:
    http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/2007/01/29-2007_technology-7.html

    1. Re:And SuSE was awarded best Linux Desktop? by moderatorrater · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Novell didn't pay as much in advertising this month is all.

    2. Re:And SuSE was awarded best Linux Desktop? by imemyself · · Score: 1

      From their descriptions, it sounds like they think Ubuntu would be more for individual/home users, while Novell/SuSE would be better for businesses. And I would have to agree with them.

      --
      Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
    3. Re:And SuSE was awarded best Linux Desktop? by kandresen · · Score: 1

      I made a mistake there, the SuSE award was from January; they have indeed been replaced with Ubuntu!

      The presentation pages have errors in them on each of the last slides. Instead of linking to the current awards, they all link to the January edition!!!

    4. Re:And SuSE was awarded best Linux Desktop? by TheLink · · Score: 1

      Heh and who got Miss Congeniality?

      Too lazy to read "info"world.

      --
  13. To me it's interesting for two reasons. by jd · · Score: 1
    First, CentOS doesn't include a lot of applications you'd expect in a server and ages awkwardly due to infrequent patch updates and an antique Linux kernel. To me, that makes it surprising even to be an OSS top enterprise winner. Well, unless everyone else suddenly got severe food-poisoning at exactly the same moment.

    Secondly, Ubuntu lacks a lot of the real-timeness of a server, which screws with audio/video links, and won't always detect package collisions - it'll sometimes just whatever was/is already running there should do fine.

    Thirdly, Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

    I'd prefer one OS that could be tuned properly than a hundred OS' that can't operate properly because there's no resouces left to go round.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    1. Re:To me it's interesting for two reasons. by cool_arrow · · Score: 1

      2.6.18 is antique?

    2. Re:To me it's interesting for two reasons. by jd · · Score: 1
      Kernels age according to how rapidly things evolve - ie: it's event-driven, not clock-driven - specifically in ways that involve architectural changes, incompatibilities, API/ABI replacements, etc. Ignoring minor updates, relatively insignificant extensions and other work that just doesn't have a fundamental design impact, what changes are there since 2.6.18? Well, the Wireless Extensions API has been largely cut, the workqueue API has been effectively replaced, the crypto API has been partly re-written, the subsystem structre no longer exists, DMA memory zones are optional, there's now a Completely Fair Scheduler, the virtual memory management is changing, the sysfs core has been replaced, device resource management is now in, we have dynamic ticks and deferrable timers, RDMA support has substantially changed, network labeling has been included, sysctl is being taken out, we're moving towards a tickless system, and more realtime updates have been made.

      In my books, one or two major changes constitutes noticeable aging. Fifteen major changes since 2.6.18, plus the numerous minor ones, is more than enough to make 2.6.18 look quaintly prehistoric.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  14. Criteria by Cryophallion · · Score: 0

    From TFA:

    All three are one-stop Exchange replacements for Linux. Our winner, Scalix, isn't the most feature-rich or innovative of the three (Zimbra is), but it has what most businesses expect from a mail and collaboration platform, along with a solid enterprise pedigree.

    So, instead of awarding the one that has the most features and innovations, they give the one an award that has what "most people expect" and "a good pedigree"? Now, following full disclosure, I use zimbra community edition for the email server at my small company. However, I fully evaluated Scalix and open-exchange, and found that Zimbra offered far more of what I expect than scalix does (including conversations, shared calendars, etc).

    I guess it just amazes me that they admit that one product is better than another in the article, but give the award to someone else. It's just ridiculous.

    1. Re:Criteria by compro01 · · Score: 2, Informative

      they give the one an award that has what "most people expect" and "a good pedigree"?

      well, in a business setting, a program that works damn-near-identically to the one you currently use is certainly a better idea than throwing something completely different out to the masses to learn. training costs and temporary loss of productivity are important things to consider.

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
  15. A mad suggestion by Eevee1 · · Score: 0

    Wouldn't it be better if the Bossies were done by Sourceforge and hosted on Sourgeforge? That way, it cuts out most of the "Winning by advertising" problem.

  16. Spelling? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't you love it when the spelling errors are in big, bold text? Look at slide 4 of the security slide show's title: Anti-firus gateway: ClamAV.

  17. Did NCSoft win for Best Migration? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    NCSoft recently migrated from Teh Lunix to Windows Server 2003. Did they win the "Best Migration" award?

  18. Wireshark and Azureus Vuze? by MLS100 · · Score: 1

    I grabbed Azureus Vuze when it first came out. I'd like to try it but it finished downloading about 12 days ago and has been loading ever since.

    Wireshark, however, is a very nice application and I have used it countless times to troubleshoot network issues and it even as a visual aid to help people understand basic networking.

    Not sure how they are even close to comparable.

    Kidding aside, an application whose function is to implement a simple file transfer protocol should not be 50 megs, especially when you open it and wonder where the file transfer interface is.

  19. Left out in the cold.... for now. by stacey7165 · · Score: 1

    What's interesting is where there wasn't a winner. One area, Enterprise Monitoring, the editors decided that they couldn't arrive at a conclusion for. So no winner - just officially putting HP OpenView and IBM Tivoli "on notice".

    Check out the article: http://www.infoworld.com/infoworld/article/07/09/10/37FE-boss-enterprise-monitoring_1.html

    Full disclosure: I work for one of the, um, finalists/threats mentioned in the article. Hyperic http://www.hyperic.com/. That said, I know they are doing a review of our product. I guess they will announce it later... another way for the BOSSIEs to just keep on keepin on...

  20. Java everywhere? by abecede · · Score: 1

    I think it's a bit sad that they focus almost exclusively on Java in their "open source in software development" area. Where are other really interesting languages like Python, Perl, PHP, etc.? The world does not run on Java alone.

    1. Re:Java everywhere? by Mode_Locrian · · Score: 1

      "The world does not run on Java alone." Oh? I'm pretty sure it's the only thing that gets me moving in the morning...

  21. CentOS vs Ubuntu by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

    I tried using CentOS 5 for an Intranet server once (MediaWiki, some other internal apps...).

    Result? I got to about the 15th self-compiled RPM and decided that maintaining the damn thing such that all these apps were patched would be a distributor's job, and I'd never keep up. The security concerns that I raised here forced me to move to Ubuntu, where everything just worked.

    Interestingly, all I was doing was rpm-rebuild on Fedora RPMs.

    --
    Support my political activism on Patreon.
    1. Re:CentOS vs Ubuntu by neurovish · · Score: 1

      What packages were you setting up?
      I have a feeling that "You're doing it wrong".
      If you want something that has all the toys ever created use Gentoo or something.

    2. Re:CentOS vs Ubuntu by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Many of the PHP packages like php-gd2 are not available; appropriate versions of tools which, for example, process PDFs (xpdf has pdf2text) or Word documents for the searching of documents in a database don't exist in RHEL/RHAS/CentOS; you can't install MySQL Administrator if you want a GUI display of MySQL performance statistics because getting the right version of LUA is impossible (even after you get gtkmm and glibmm and cairomm). xpdf by the way required ... I got up to the 10th recursive dependency not in CentOS 5 before I gave up.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
  22. They must be kidding on the securty list by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nessus is not open source anymore! They closed their code.

    ACID is not maintained, use BASE instead!

    Swatch is old and outdated, use OSSEC instead!

    Refs:
    http://news.com.com/Nessus+security+tool+closes+its+source/2100-7344_3-5890093.html
    http://base.secureideas.net/
    http://www.ossec.net/

    1. Re:They must be kidding on the securty list by Doctor-Optimal · · Score: 1

      Swatch is old and outdated, use OSSEC instead!
      Huh, I switched to Timex when Swatch became old and outdated...
      --
      New punctuation update "~" (no quotes) at the end of a line to indicate sarcasm. ~