Hello All,
Source : http://arstechnica.com/columns/linux/linux-20050102.ars/2
Development application of the year
We judged ease of use, documentation, maturity of tools, and ease of deployment.
Those magical programs facilitate the creativity flow from the hands of the programmers. A good development application or framework allows someone with an idea and some know-how to do his part to change how people interact with their data.
*Winner*: Mono http://www.go-mono.com
The Mono Project develops a common language runtime environment and development tools that aim to conform with Microsoft's .NET framework. The pace of Mono's development and maturation as a platform has been very rapid and has encouraged the creation of a plethora of tools and applications targeting the Mono runtime and built with the Mono development toolset. It has made the language C# increasingly popular for rapid application development http://arstechnica.com/columns/linux/linux-20040715.ars on Linux. Additionally, development tools such as MonoDevelop http://arstechnica.com/columns/linux/linux-20040805.ars/1 have been written and continue to improve rapidly to provide the closest thing to an ideal RAD environment for Linux.
Most improved in the community
Sometimes it doesn't matter what you brought to the game to start with. There is always room for improvement and occasionally a group manages to pull together in such a significant way to make you completely forgive or at least forget any previous awfulness.
*Winner*: Novell http://www.novell.com
Novell has long been a fixture in the IT community, but this year they managed to dive headfirst into the Linux field and produced a lot of excitement. From their acquisition of SuSE, their managing of the Ximian project, and continued development on projects like iFolder, Novell has really turned on the awesome, and we look forward to seeing their continued progress in the year to come. Oh, and iFolder. Did I mention iFolder? iFolder.
Amish.