Sourceforge Community Choice finalists: Some curious choices

Sourceforge.net has announced its 2008 Community Choice finalists, and includes a wide range of projects that I'm seeing for the first time. Sure, there are old favorites like OpenOffice and Firebird, but when was the last time you used Sphinx (SQL full-text search engine), FreeMind (mind mapper), or Habari (next-generation blogging platform)?

Some of the finalists - or, rather where they were voted - are quite silly. Under the "Most Likely to Be the Next $1B Acquisition" category, only a small fraction of the candidates are actually corporations capable of being purchased for $1 billion. (Zenoss, Magento, and Talend welcome your $1 billion. :-)

Others are a little closer to the truth. Under "Most Likely to Change the World," Linux and Ubuntu both feature, though arguably they already have. OpenOffice also features there but, come on, if it hasn't changed the world by now, why should we expect it to do so tomorrow?

(Ironically, a few of these "world changers" also find themselves under the "Most Likely to Get Users Sued" category, including Launchy and ReactOS.)

Anyway, hop on over to the site to vote for your favorite open-source software projects. Your favorite project isn't there? Neither is mine. I would have put Adium, Handbrake, and others (including, of course, Alfresco) above most of the projects voted into the final.

But that's why it's called "community voting." I'm just one vote among many.

[CoffeeGroupUSA]

It'd be good to see Drupal and Joomla highly rated too.

-John Coonen
CMSConnection.com

[andycowl]

Why don't you get out of your ivory tower and maybe post a detailed review of Habari instead of making snide, patronising comments about it ?

Oh and to answer your question - I last used Habari about 12 minutes ago and absolutely love it.

[Matt Asay]

@andycowl. I didn't make a snide comment about Habari. I indicated that I hadn't heard of it. Given that you obviously have, perhaps you could provide more detail on it here?

[michaeltwofish]

@matt, Habari is still alpha (though people have said anything that has a version starting with a 0 shouldn't work this well). It's easy-to-use blogging software designed to work with you, rather than having to having to wrestle it. Probably the greatest thing about the project is the community, so people can get passionate :) If you really do want to hear more, feel free to contact me.

[dmondark]

Maybe some of those projects of the project are not one of the "old favorites" because they are nominated for the "Best *new* project"?

[shodanium]

Speaking of Sphinx, the question can be a bit paraphrased.

When was the last time you used search feature on DailyMotion, Mininova, ThePirateBay, Netlog, or any other site that actually uses Sphinx for searching behind the scenes? :-)

[furnilover21]

ReactOS has done an internal audit, so it technically wouldn't get users sued, especially since it's mainly wine based.