How to Pick an Open Source Winner

With the deluge of open source projects available for exploitation, the skill of picking a winner becomes highly critical. Afterall, who wants to be wagering one's company's success on a loser?

The first tip is to know the lay of the land. You need a good observation post to see all that's coming and going. One wouldn't one to be unsuspecting and choose a horse that's leading but gets beat out in the end. In short, know what's out there before you make a selection. For pointers you can always check out my extensive lists of open source projects written in Java.

Once you've got your list, then it is time to make some evaluations. I have some generic criteria that I put together a while back ago that you can use for almost any project.

If you're in it for the money, then you might want to peruse my list of ways of making money out off open source. Word of advice though, it's a really tough business, the odds are better in most any other business.

Finally, why did I write this piece anyway? Well that's because one of my horses has just won! Congratulations to AspectWerkz! They've just announced that they were invited to join the AspectJ team to develop AspectJ 5. No better acknowledgement of success than your competition admitting that they need your help. My pick was made on June 20th, 2003.

My previous winning pick was of course Hibernate which I proclaimed back in December 12th, 2002. For that I almost got lynched by a mob of OJB adherents. Of course, the easiest pick of them all was Eclipse, something I mentioned when I started blogging back in November 4th, 2002. The NetBeans folks didn't complain as much since they too saw the writing on the wall.

So who do I think is next? Which Java open source project will be met with stunning success and recognition? The closest thing to a winner that I can think of right now is Daisy. I've not had the time to truly evaluate it, however it looks and smells like a winner. Rest assured dear reader, you'll know when I've picked it when all my websites start migrating to it.