Why we still love open source

“Just take a look at this year’s Bossie Award winners, beginning
with Android. We gave Android a Bossie this year despite the
proviso that hardware manufacturers get Google’s approval first
before they use the Android brand. After all, Android source code
is available under an Apache license, and we can only hope Google
fends off legal challenges from Oracle and, potentially, Apple. If
you ask me, only an open platform can foster the kind of inventive
mindstorm that swirls around Android, from dozens of tablets to
hundreds of thousands of apps.

“On the app dev side, open source has dominated for years. The
hot scripting languages and the Eclipse IDE are all open source, of
course, as is Git, the phenomenally popular version control system
that won a Bossie for the third time this year. But the innovation
keeps coming. The trendy JavaScript framework Node.js, which opens
up server-side programming to hordes of client-side code slingers,
earned its first Bossie this year. And although it was too late for
Bossie consideration, keep your eye on Opa, the new open source
language that InfoWorld’s Neil McAllister believes may transform
Web development. “

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