Open source doesn't make Gartner's "top-ten" list
Perhaps the biggest news in Gartner's latest "Top 10 Technologies" report is the absence of open source. Or perhaps its omnipresence. The report offers essentially the same technologies as last year's list, with some curious additions:
- Multicore and hybrid processors
- Virtualization and fabric computing
- Social networks and social software
- Cloud computing and cloud/Web platforms
- Web mashups
- User Interface
- Ubiquitous computing
- Contextual computing
- Augmented reality
- Semantics
Open source is nowhere to be seen. But perhaps that's of even more interest: Open source is powering virtually every technology in Gartner's top-10 list. Gartner called out last year that open source is cannibalizing proprietary software at an increasing pace. Open source is the behind-the-scenes director making all these other technologies tick.
Perhaps it's time to start thinking of open source as essential plumbing (in the way that Google does): Everyone has it, everyone uses it, but perhaps there's not as much need to overtly discuss it?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
In many of those 10 categories there are technologies that are open source, especially that Web2.0 and Open Source seem to be going hand in hand in most cases.
For example, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Ruby on Rails, Mootools, ... are used in many social media and mashup projects.