“The rise of open-source software represents a sea change in enterprise IT, and it is increasingly the go-to option when developers need to spin up new applications or infrastructure,” said Dharmesh Thakker, the Battery Ventures general partner who oversaw the months-long research effort behind the BOSS Index.
Two of the top three highest-ranked projects in the index, Linux and MySQL, have spawned successful companies, Thakker pointed out. No. 1-ranked Linux underpins Red Hat and Ubuntu, while database company MySQL, later acquired by Sun Microsystems (now part of Oracle), is powered by MySQL technology, which ranked No. 3. And the popular version-control system Git, which ranked No. 2 on the list, has inspired companies like GitHub and GitLab.
But some high-ranking projects in the index still haven’t been commercialized, despite lots of buzz and developer interest. Other fast-growing projects, such as Artifactory and Bintray by JFrog, have yet to rank on the index.
