Bossie Awards Honor Open Source Software

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."

Comments

CentOS?

[lgarner]

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

Re:CentOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:CentOS?

[RealSurreal]

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

Re:CentOS?

[Kelson]

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?

Re:CentOS?

[zx-15]

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

Re:CentOS?

[the_womble]

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.

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

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

[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.

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

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

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.

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

[jmyers]

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.

Nessus as open source

[jmauro]

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

Re:Open source awards give awards to Open Source..

[Rakishi]

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.

And SuSE was awarded best Linux Desktop?

[kandresen]

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

Re:Criteria

[compro01]

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.