InformationWeek’s Charles Babcock, who’s hands-down the best IT reporter in the industry press, has an outstanding cover package on open source this week. He writes about something that open-source aficianados don’t like to discuss: the fact that the majority of open-source projects go nowhere, whether because of lack of user interest, developer distraction or competition from more successful alternatives.

This is a big issue for IT organizations, of course. Bet a big project on the wrong horse and you can end up wasting a ton of time and money. There are winners and losers in the commercial software world, of course, but that business has the benefit of an active media and analyst community that keeps tabs on the players. There is no such monitor in open source, although Babcock notes some fledgling projects such as FLOSSmole that are trying to provide that service. Basically, everyone’s on his or her own and you take your best guess at whether the software you’re adopting will be around in five years.

The piece opens with a great anecdote about an open-source project that foundered because of a legal dispute involving the company that was trying to commercialize it. Babcock goes on to relay a lot of solid advice on how to avoid mistakes. This is an innovative take on an important market issue that I haven’t seen covered before.