Compare 140,000 plus open source projects

NEW DELHI: The benefits of open source are being understood more and more in enterprise IT. There is rarely an organization or an enterprise that doesn’t use open source products and technologies today. IT managers who are asked about barriers and issues that would limit their use of open source typically mention support and license topics.

However one of the most relevant problems they face is the lack of knowledge on open source solutions and their ability to fulfill enterprise needs. There are more than 140,000 open source projects in existence. It is not simple to keep an overview and to separate out the pearls.

The objective of Optaros’ Open Source Catalogue 2007 is to give IT decision makers navigation support by listing the most relevant, useful and enterprise-ready open source platforms, components, frameworks and solutions in an easy-to-read overview.

Optaros’ Open Source Catalogue 2007 lists some 260 “projects” in four software categories (operating

systems and infrastructure, application development and infrastructure, infrastructure solutions and business applications).

The selection and the rating system is based on the experience of Optaros’ worldwide consulting and integration work force, substantial research and evaluations, as well as interaction with open source communities and companies. At the end of the day, the selection and evaluation will always be somewhat subjective, even when the analysis and the decisions were made as objectively as possible.

This catalogue can be a useful tool when thinking about alternatives to existing technologies or starting a new implementation project and identifying suitable frameworks or solutions. The Open Source Catalogue is not intended to replace detailed evaluation or proof of concepts, but provide some help to conduct a first selection, said the company website.

The open source community's reaction

The general reaction of the Open source community has been positive towards Optaros' initiative but feel that the project "lacks depth and breadth" and there is a huge scope for improvement. 

According to Rabi Mishra, areas like ESB and BPM are completely missing and there is no mention of popular tools like  Servicemix, Mule, Cletix, Intalio or jBPM.

Countering, Rabi's comment Bonita Project Leader, Miguel pointed out that these areas have been covered under the Business Process and Workflow Management and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) chapters.

Miguel also shared that they are working on a similar project, a website which will compare several open source projects in details.