Packt Publishing announced today the winner of their 2009 Best Open Source Other CMS Award. Using the word "Other" is Packt's way of saying non-PHP content management system. For the second straight year the winner for Best Open Source Other CMS is Plone.
Since the introduction of this category in 2007, Plone has consistently featured among the top three, having won it in 2008. In another close contest, dotCMS had to settle for the first runner up position, finishing ahead of mojoPortal in the second runner spot.
So far, Packt has not given many details as to why the judges selected Plone over the remaining non-PHP finalists. I do know that last year, the judges praised "the ecosystem that is developing around Python and Zope is encouraging" for which supports Python. We'll add to this article if additional details are made public by Packt or the judges themselves.
Perhaps there is very little surprise to also see dotCMS and mojoPortal listed within the the top three CMS in this category. However, I'm surprised that we don't see a mention of DotNetNuke as a winner in this category. In a recent review of DotNetNuke, I found the CMS to be much improved from previous years and doing a lot of the right things in the area of usability.
Update: Judge Stoyan Stefanov has posted his notes from his review of the five finalists in this categegory: http://www.phpied.com/open-source-cms-aw...