What do Alfresco, SugarCRM, FireFox, Hyperic, VirtualBox, Pentaho, MySQL and SNORT have in common? Savio beat me to the punch on InfoWorld’s “Best of Open Source” awards, which serves me right since I was flat on my back sick the last two days. I won’t repeat the full list (it’s in Savio’s post) but it is nice to see some great open source apps getting the recognition they deserve. Some of the apps I’m familiar with, like Alfresco (content management), Hyperic HQ (application monitoring), Pentaho (BI), SugarCRM (CRM), Firefox (browser), VirtualBox (desktop virtualization), SNORT (network intrusion) are not only best in open source, but best in their category, even competing against the closed source incumbents. Not every open source application is at that same level of functionality and ease of use as these ones, and some may take a few more years to reach the same level of completeness. But in my view these apps deserve greater recognition for going beyond being the best in open source to truly being best in class. And it make take the industry in general a few more years to recognize it, but every day deals are being won where open source is going head-to-head against the closed source incumbents and it’s winning not just on price, but because the products are better and easier to work with. That’s where you can see the power of open source disrupting the market. Also, since I had at least one person ask me, no I was not part of the decision making process for any of these awards. So I’m glad that MySQL won in its category, and I’m sorry that some others apps didn’t. But I’m just a blogger here at InfoWorld, not part of the team that put together the awards. Open Source