GigaOm (Om Malik’s blog network) just launched a new open source software focused blog called Ostatic. The goal, Malik said today in an interview, is to track news around the world’s 150,000+ open source projects.
Malik quotes IDC, saying that 71% of the worlds developers have used open source software, and that 50% of organizations have some open source software in production. This is, of course, big business – MySQL was recently acquired by Sun for $1 billion, for example.
The Ostatic blog is really just a wrapper for additional services. The site will also have a directory with key information on each project, including alternatives and links to documentation, forums, mailings lists and the source code itself. Initial data in the director has been added from outsourced writers in India. Going forward, projects can send updates and new content to the site, or add it themselves.
The directory portion of Ostatic is competitive with a number of existing services, including SourceForge, which tracks 170,000 or so projects.
Ostatic also has a “questions and answers” area, similar to Yahoo Answers, where readers can ask questions and get responses from experts.
So is Ostatic built on open source? Yes, say Malik. The platform is built on open source Drupal, and licensed from Vox Holdings.
If you’re interested in open source, there are a number of other good blogs covering the topic as well: TheOpenForce, Tecosystems, CBR Open Source Weblog, rand($thoughts);, Mitchell’s Blog, Law & Life: Silicon Valley, and The Open Road.