It's great to see Infoworld recognizing exceptional open-source projects with its BOSSIE awards. Even more significant to me, however, is the fact that it was able to come up with 36 great open-source projects, without a weak one among them.
Projects like OpenBravo, MuleSource, Liferay, ClamAV, and others (yes, Alfresco, too) demonstrate that we have a vibrant and growing open-source community, commercial and otherwise. Five years ago the BOSSIEs would have struggled to find more than a handful of exceptional projects.
Now we have an abundance. This is good for customers and it's good for the software industry. We've needed real competition for some time, competition that focuses vendors on service, not licenses. Open source is leading the way. The BOSSIEs are just a reflection of that.