The sixth annual Open Source Business Conference opened March 17 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco and will present two full days of seminars, keynotes and networking opportunities. MindTouch, an open source-based analytics and collaborative networking software maker, came out on the first day with a list of who it deems to be the Most Powerful Voices in Open Source. These are the most prominent and followed open source commentators, representing several spheres of influence including media, vendors, OSS projects, standards bodies, community management and more, MindTouch said. The ranking draws from an array of metrics available through Web and Enterprise 2.0 channels, including Twitter, Google News alerts, unique online visitor counts and analysis of the related ‘buzz’ of vendor/project affiliations. The data itself was compiled using the MindTouch platform, which federated these data sources, applying varied weighting, and processing it for delivery of the ranking, MindTouch said. In no particular order, here is the Top 20 list — plus a blog by Mark Fidelman explaining how they were selected.
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