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New Initiative to Stack Open Source Applications

Finding an open source application on the Internet could be a hard task to complete, but now thanks to a new initiative from open source stack provider SpikeSource, installing and deploying a host of popular open source applications is about to get much easier. The Spike Certified Solutions Program certifies open source applications for deployment and bundling with SpikeSource`s open source infrastructure stacks. The infrastructure stacks provide tested and validated open source components that form the basis from which application can be deployed and run. SpikeSource offers free as well as paid support offerings of its stacks.

SpikeSource tests and certifies applications in the certified program and then offers a solution that gives users a one click install for everything they need to run the application. End users get both the application and the software infrastructure. The certified stacks retain the core open source promise of no vendor lock-in. Most of SpikeSource`s stacks are being consumed for free, by both end users and applications developers. SpikeSource notes that there is no cost to the open source vendors to become part of the Spike Certified Solutions Program except for their effort.

To date there have been over 150,000 downloads of SpikeSource`s stacks, which first appeared in April of last year. Of that number, Halsey admitted that paying customers are a very small percentage. The certified solutions program so far is comprised of 13 different open source vendors, including: Adisoft, Expense Submittal System, Alfresco Enterprise Content Management, Best Practical, Continuent, Funambol, JasperSoft, Logicalware, Pentaho, SQLFusion, SugarCRM, SynchSource, Volante and XenSource.