Six open source projects you should be using
The IT world has overcome much of its skittishness regarding the use of open source projects. It obviously wasn't always that way, and plenty of IT shops still refuse to consider open source alternatives to commercial solutions. But most folks have come around to the fact that open source tools are a great asset to any organization and won't actually set fire to your data center or ransack the break room, no matter what the sales droids say.
In many cases, the use of open source tools starts in the skunkworks of the IT organization, where a few individuals leverage open source projects to perform a specific task that is either unfunded or underfunded. Once the proverbial camel's nose is in the tent, more open source applications and frameworks find their way into critical IT systems. Yet with little or no advertising, many open source projects that every shop should be testing, if not implementing, never appear on the radar. Here are a few of my favorites.
