I don't think that this is the first service I've come across like this, but OpenLogic Exchange (OLEX) offers what many organizations need in their decision to go to an open source product: Support, Update and Indemnification Services.
What I find most interesting and unique about their service, is that it falls in line with something that I've blogged about a few times now in reference to SourceKibitzer and Ohloh. OLEX puts all the open source software in the library that they support through a 42-point certification process. That certification process is described here. They essentially rank the open source projects that they support.
The certification process is not public, but it calculates a score based on three areas OLEX believes are important: Adoption, Community and Licensing. It's unclear how easily it is to affect this score and the disclaimer at the bottom of the page makes it clear that the rating is only a guide and "not a replacement for your own due diligence". I assume that since it bases it's scores on the same data as everyone else, that it should be quite simple to get an odd ranking here and there. Of course, it is my impression, as I browsed the projects in their library, that OLEX is focused on larger name and longer lived projects like MySQL, Apache and JBoss so the chance of an off rating would probably be relatively slim.
Either way, I'm glad to see more resources for IT folks to make more informed decisions on open source and hopefully the support offered through OLEX and organizations like it will allow open source to become more pervasive.
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