Hear that lowing sound? It's the return of the Bossies, InfoWorld's awards for the Best of Open Source Software. This year we have 60 winners in 8 categories ranging from App Dev to Storage. As an added bonus, we've thrown... Hear that lowing sound? It’s the return of the Bossies, InfoWorld’s awards for the Best of Open Source Software. This year we have 60 winners in 8 categories ranging from App Dev to Storage. As an added bonus, we’ve thrown in a new section citing the best desktop productivity products. The Bossies are a carefully culled collection of the best the open source community has to offer. Any IT buyer on the prowl for cost-effective solutions would do well to bookmark this. By “cost-effective,” I mean free. “Everything we chose is available for free,” says Executive Editor Doug Dineley, who conceived of the BOSSIES and oversaw the selection of winners again this year. “You can pay for support or for more functionality. But all our picks were based on the free versions.” [ Check out last year’s BOSSIES winners to find out what’s new and which open source apps continue to be strong. ] A lot has been written about the increasing commercialization of open source software. When you add in maintenance and support and enterprise-class features, the total cost to the customer can indeed approach licensing proportions. But what’s more striking to Doug is the staggering variety and value of no- or low-cost open source solutions today: “It’s amazing how great this stuff is. When you look at what’s available and how good it is, you can’t help but think that someday, all software is going to be free.” According to Doug, the benefits go beyond protecting the closely guarded budgets of IT departments. For one thing, businesses have more control over deployment than they do with commercial software — after all, you’re paying the guy who implements the software, not the company that created it. Another plus is that open source software can actually be a more secure investment than its commercial equivalent. How so? Take the example of AppArmor, an application security product from Novell. The company laid off AppArmor’s developers, but the community around it didn’t go away, which means that AppArmor will continue to be supported, maintained, and revised by its devotees. What the increasing strength of open source means for the future of ISVs is anyone’s guess. The party line I hear from most vendors is that open source keeps them honest and forces them to innovate at a faster pace — commercial firms’ well-funded R&D can always stay a step ahead of what the open source community can come up with, so if you want more than commodity level functionality, you’ll pay for it. But that’s a moving target. Open source software just keeps getting better, and it’s unclear how much more innovation software buyers can absorb, particularly as we enter a recession that may well force IT to cut its budget all over again. BOSSIE’s moo could be saying: Why buy the cow when you can get the milk free? And on a final note … InfoWorld lost one of its own last week. Ed Foster, our tireless Gripe Line columnist, passed away unexpectedly. Ed isn’t replaceable, but I’d like to reassure InfoWorld’s readers that we are searching for a columnist to continue Ed’s work as a tireless consumer advocate. So please visit the Gripe Line and let us know what we should be covering. Technology Industry