OStatic

InfoWorld's annual Bossies awards recognize top free and open source software projects, and the third annual list of 40 winners is out now. This year's list of winners, unlike last year's, focuses strictly on enterprise software, application dev tools, network management software, platforms and middleware.

Mobile applications had a good showing among the award winners this year. PhoneGap, an open source development tool for building fast, easy mobile apps with JavaScript, got a nod. Fast-rising open source projects were also honored, including the WebKit browser rendering engine, and Hadoop and Hive--tools for processing data collections in the terabyte and petabyte range. OpenStreetMap, an open source version of popular mapping services like Google Maps and MapQuest, was one of the more interesting Bossie winners. Here are the winners, with links to the pages for these projects that we maintain here at OStatic, where you can find out much more about them and search for alternatives.

We've written before several times about Hadoop, an open source software framework for highly scalable queries and data-intensive distributed applications. The ecosystem of companies and organizations using Hadoop has grown dramatically in recent years, and we've also written about Cloudera, a well-funded company that is focusing on providing support and services for Hadoop, in addition to offering its own Hadoop distribution.

Today, Cloudera announced the first ever Hadoop World conference, to take place at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City on October 2nd, with registration available here. A look at the companies and institutions organizing and participating in the event shows just how far Hadoop has come, and how it has extended well beyond just search applications.