Linux Magazine’s Top 20 Companies to Watch in 2008

Who knows what the future will hold? Well, heaven knows we don’t or we’d have already won the lottery a few times and retired to a private island somewhere. However, we can look at the past to make a few reasonable predictions– such as the companies in the free and open source software community that are going to have a major impact on the market in 2008.

Once again we’ve read the tea leaves in preparation for the coming year, to attempt to foresee the companies and technologies that will be preeminent in 2008. The criteria for selection? Obviously, picking the” Top 20″ companies is a fairly subjective exercise, and in the end it was a matter of opinion. However, to make the list, a company had to be involved in the FOSS community (one way or another) and have a major impact on that community.

Just being a consumer of FOSS technologies isn’t enough– a company needs to contribute in some way. And we stuck to commercial entities this year, even though some organizations (like the Free Software Foundation, and Software in the Public Interest) obviously have a major impact as well.

To come up with a list of movers and shakers we conferred with industry experts, conducted a reader poll through October online, and (of course) drew on our own observations of the industry. Having done so, we now humbly present our list to you.