Bossies 2012: The Best Of Open Source Software Awards

Welcome to the sixth annual Best of Open Source Software Awards, otherwise known as the Bossies. If you've enjoyed our previous Bossies, you're in for a treat: This year, with the help of our extended InfoWorld family of contributing editors, we've pulled together more than 100 Bossie-worthy products in seven categories, from application development tools to -- for the first time -- games and other fun stuff.

• The best open source applications
• The best open source application development tools
• The best open source data center and cloud software
• The best open source databases
• The best open source desktop applications
• The best open source networking and security software
• Now for something completely different

Just as the Bossies have grown fatter, so has the totality of the open source beast. Sourceforge claims more than 4 million downloads, 3,402 code commits, and 722 bugs were tracked on the day I'm writing this paragraph alone. The most popular by far is the VLC video player, which continues to beat many commercial players. And all it takes is a glance at GitHub to see that JavaScript code for the browser (jQuery) and the server (Node) continue to draw downloads and bug fixes like flies to flypaper.