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.
As if Google wasn’t a large enough presence in the FOSS world with its ginormous online presence and sponsorship of the Google Summer of Code, the company cemented its place on our Top 20 with the announcement of Android and the Open Handset Alliance (OHA).
We’ve long thought that mobile devices are going to play a huge role in the future of personal computing– and that Linux and FOSS would play a huge role in the future of mobile devices. While we’re still disappointed that we didn’t get the gPhone announcement we were hoping for, the OHA could be a major influence in the mobile market.
Finally, Google serves as one of the most visible poster children for Linux and open source, so we couldn’t ignore its influence in this area. Its Summer of Code program, though not officially announced for 2008, is a major influence on open source projects.
While Google is not the only company sponsoring open source development, few companies have the far-reaching effects that Google does by throwing money at so many different projects.
(8 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)
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