Open-source companies to watch

How did the company get its start? Co-founders Bertrand Diard and Fabrice Bonan were managing the data-integration practice for a large systems integrator, using proprietary data-integration technologies from Informatica, IBM and Business Objects. They decided there should be a more flexible and open way to pursue data integration, so they developed an open-source product.

How did the company get its name? The founders wanted to include the letters ETL, which stands for extract, transform and load in the data-integration market. They put the letter "D" at the end to signify that they perform integration differently than pre-existing vendors.

CEO and background: Diard was the business manager at a European systems integrator, and in 1999 co-founded a software company specializing in real-time 3D animation.

Funding: US$7 million from AGF Private Equity and Galileo Partners.

Who's using the product? Customers include Monster.com, ETAI, University of Toulouse, SEMIDEP, Accor, BTD ClearViews, SNCF French Railways, and Swissport.

Company name: Wikia

Founded: November 2004

Location: San Mateo, California, and New York

What does the company offer? Founded by Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, Wikia makes this list because it is building an open-source search engine that should be available by the end of 2007. The project got a boost in July when Wikia bought Grub, an open-source tool that will help Wikia build an index of the Web. With Grub, Wikia is able to offload the cost of crawling the Web to volunteers who download the Grub program.

Why is it worth watching? Wikia's project will allow people to build search engines even if they lack the financial resources of a large corporation. Wikia CEO Gil Penchina believes this will vastly increase the number of specialty search sites focusing on specific topics, such as medicine. Wikia will also use the code to host its own public-facing search site.

Wikia believes this project is important because search and its "supersecret" algorithms is one of the few areas of the Internet that is not open and transparent. "We've seen this explosion in creativity in Web 2.0 and we haven't seen it in search," Penchina says.

How did the project get its start? Penchina and Wales developed the idea and recruited Jeremie Miller, who founded the open-source IM protocol Jabber, http://www.jabber.org/ to lead the technical aspects of the project.

How did the company get its name? Like Wikipedia, Wikia is an obvious variation on the Hawaiian word "wiki," which is used to refer to collaborative Web sites that can be edited by users. Wikia has supported the creation of more than 3,000 wiki communities in more than 70 languages.

CEO and background: Penchina worked at eBay for eight years, ultimately as vice president for a region of Europe, before leaving in March 2006.

Funding for the search project: US$4 million from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar; Lotus Software founder Mitchell Kapor; and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. Amazon has also contributed an undisclosed amount.