There have been quite a few inititatives like POST, portletswap etc. to encourage people to submit their work in Portlets/Portal world but none really took off. More recently Liferay, a leading opensource Portal, started with “portal themes” contest which ended last month end. The idea was to build the graphic user interface “skins” which helps developers to change the look and feel of the portal without actually changing any code. There are around 20+ themes that can be downloaded from Liferay site.
Liferay is one product that is really making heads in open source world with the portal package providing a lot of portlets and now lot of themes to choose from. The response clearly indicate its popularity and people’s interest to move towards open source. Governments, schools and other public institutions that don’t have much money to spare will increasingly turn to open-source software as an option with many open source source products showing great competition proprietary application. More people using open source at work will lead to more interest in open-source use among home PC users, who will spread the word easily.
Lets open up the world with open source !!!!