A new report this week released by consulting firm Water & Stone found WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal remained the biggest three open source web content management systems by far. Perhaps most surprising was that lesser known Liferay was the leading Java WCM, surpassing even the better known Alfresco according to Water & Stone's measurement criteria. Although the report did point out that Alfresco did lead in several metrics.

The trouble with open source measurements though is that it's hard to do. It's not like Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Office packages purchased off the shelf, or even licenses sold by EMC or Open Text. When it comes to open source, the numbers get a little murkier, something the report admits up front.

The report writers, for instance were not just handicapped by trying to count downloads, but also by the fact that WordPress the CMS is extremely difficult to differentiate from the WordPress the blog hosting service.

When asked the simple question, what CMS they were currently using, the overwhelming winner--with 1297 of the 4000 responses--was Joomla!, followed by WordPress with 1012 and Drupal with 512.

Another surprising result of this report was that Jahia dropped off this year's report.

For more information:
- see the full report available for free download from Water & Stone

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