Three Open Source Startups Named ''Ones to Watch'' at Recent Open Source Conference

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. – The Open Source Business Conference announced three emerging Open Source companies as "Ones to Watch" last week. The three emerging open source startup companies selected as "Ones to Watch" at the event include:

Alfresco
Centeris
EnterpriseDB

Bryce Roberts of OSBC led the judging, and he received input from a sampling of over 20 OSBC participants. The three companies were chosen from a list of 18 companies that participated in the OSBC "Emerging Elite" showcase. The showcase participants were chosen from a list of over 100 open source startups.

"These companies were selected based on their respective positions on the open source adoption curve," said Bryce Roberts, OSBC. "The criteria used were that each of the companies picked is at a key inflection point in their development which should make for some interesting developments over the course of the year until the next Boston event. It's an exciting time for them and now we will all be watching."

Keynotes and conference sessions at OSBC were well received. Jason Matusow of Microsoft described the closing of open source through its increased commercialization, and pointed to Microsoft's increasing participation in the open source community. Eben Moglen, Chair, Software Freedom Law Center described the GPL and open source licensing generally as much safer and less prone to litigation than commercial software licensing. Hal Stern, CTO, Software, Sun Microsystems detailed the rise of the next generation of open source development and declared that the perpetual beta, popularized by Google, is here to stay. Dirk Hohndel, Linux and Open Source Strategy, Intel identified $1.7 billion Intel has saved by moving to open source since 1997, and highlighted ways for other enterprises to similarly save through open source.

"Any time you do a show for the first time, you worry whether people will come and, more importantly, that the conference content will equal what attendees have come to expect," said Matt Asay, conference director, OSBC. "This was OSBC's first time in Boston, but you wouldn't have known it from the healthy crowds, the hallway networking, and the exceptional speakers. The event was a huge success."