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Open-source software is one of the great success stories of the past few decades. The Apache HTTP Server is the world's most popular Web server, Linux has more than held its own against Unix and other proprietary operating systems, and Mozilla's Firefox browser has given Microsoft's Internet Explorer strong competition over the years. Could the same philosophy — the free and public dissemination of underlying code and specs, with multiple developers from disparate sources contributing to the design — work for tech gadgets as well? Will we one day commonly use smartphones, netbooks or other gadgets that have been developed under an open-source model, maybe even preferring them over proprietary products like the iPhone?

Vermont has become the latest government to enact an open source software policy, after Secretary of Administration Neale F. Lunderville recently signed a policy developed under state CIO David Tucker's leadership. The policy says the Vermont Department of Information and Innovation and other departments should look at open source solutions as part of the procurement process, and are directed to calculate the total cost of ownership for an open source system, including "fixed costs (direct purchases and licensing) and operational costs for support, testing, upgrades, maintenance and training," as part of the procurement process.

Institutional stock holder/Hedge Fund Elliot Associates wants to buy Novell and take it private. Sean Michael Kerner thinks this is a good idea, and a good deal for Novell.

If you're like most Internet-connected people these days, the amount of information you take in from your favorite news sites, tech blogs, and the like is just staggering. The only way to stay on top of everything is with a solid feed reader to help aggregate everything you want to read. Of course, many folks rely on Google Reader to get the job done but if you're looking for an open source option, here are five of our favorites.

Hedge fund Elliot Associates has made a bid to acquire software vendor Novell. In a public letter to the company's board of directors, the hedge fund offered $5.75 per share (a 49 percent premium), placing Novell's value at $2 billion dollars. Elliot Associates is already one of the largest institutional shareholders of Novell, with roughly 8.5 percent of the company's stock.

Stable kernel update announcements posted on LWN have a certain tendency to be followed by complaints about the amount of information which is made available. It seems that there is a desire for a description of the changes which is more accessible than the patches themselves, and for attention to be drawn to the security-relevant fixes. As an exercise in determining what kind of effort is being asked of the kernel maintainers, your editor decided to make a pass through the proposed 2.6.32.9 update and attempt to describe the impact of each of the changes - all 93 of them. The results can be found below.

Many were sceptical when Google announced that it was launching another mobile platform. After all, some said, there are already multiple offerings out there, and Google had precisely no track record in this sector: surely it was heading for a fall? The launch of the first Android phone, the G1, seemed to confirm these doubts. Although capable enough, it was clearly not going to carry Android through into the mainstream.

My good buddy Preston Gralla would have it that "Windows doesn't just dominate the desktop, but the server market as well." Eh... I don't think so. For proof, Gralla points to the latest IDC (International Data Corporation) Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker. This report covers the worldwide server market's factory revenue. But Gralla and other critics are missing that IDC is not measuring what server operating systems are being used; it's measuring what server operating systems people are buying, and those are bundled with their hardware purchases. Specifically, to quote IDC, the researchers are measuring "server revenue includes components that are typically sold today as a server bundle, including frame or cabinet and all cables, processors, memory, communication boards, and OS."

The details of Apple's patent offensive are now public, and it's clear that while HTC is the target, it's Google's Android that has got Cupertino so annoyed. The patents on which Apple is claiming infringement include obvious things such as the use of a gesture to unlock and rotate the screen based on device orientation, but they also cover deeper concepts such as thread-to-thread communication and interactions between an object-orientated GUI and a procedurally developed OS.

The success of open-source software raises a tantalizing question: Could the same design philosophy work for tech gadgets? Open-source software is one of the great success stories of the past few decades. The Apache HTTP Server is the world's most popular Web server, Linux has more than held its own against Unix and other proprietary operating systems, and Mozilla's Firefox browser has given Microsoft's Internet Explorer strong competition over the years.

Somebody better tell Microsoft that it's still March, because the suggestion of an "Internet usage tax" to fight Windows-powered botnets must be an April Fool's joke let out a month too early. According to Robert McMillan's piece on ComputerWorld, Scott Charney (Microsoft's veep for Trustworthy Computing) suggests that one way to fund fighting botnets is to tax users. "You could say it's a public safety issue and do it with general taxation." You could, but let's not.

[This is going to be good.. - Scott]

Orange has given its thumbs-up to the Intel-Nokia Linux venture Meego, the OS formerly known as Maemo and Moblin. The mobile phone network essentially said it would develop its applications, marketed under the Signature brand, to run on the operating system, allowing it to offer customer user experiences on anything from netbooks to smartphones.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has insisted that one day, the company's Google-battling Bing search engine will actually make money. "Search is going to be an ever-growing share of Microsoft's profits," the big man bellowed - literally bellowed - during a wide-ranging question and answer keynote this morning at the search-obsessed SMX West conference in Silicon Valley. "First, we've got to get to break even. And then we're got to get to profitability. And then we've got to grow share. That's how I do my math."

Out of the box, Linux runs just fine for many uses. But if you find yourself needing to ferret out performance problems or tune the kernel for better performance, Linux has more than enough tools to measure and tweak system performance. In this guide, we'll take a look at five of the best utilities to measure system performance and tweak the Linux kernel. You'll find many, many, many utilities for measuring and improving Linux system performance. The utilities discussed here are chosen because they're widely available, and provide a good scope functionality. Also, I chose to avoid tools that have too steep a learning curve. As an example, SystemTap is a bit more complex than should be covered in an overview article. I left out some of the more basic tools such as ps and top because most Linux users are exposed to them fairly early on. And I didn't try to tackle any application-specific tools.

Video and photo editing tools are a necessity in today’s world of personal media. We have lots of photographs and videos these days that could look even better when presented nicely. The tool should be powerful yet simple to use so that average Joe can use it easily. Windows and Mac have had good video editing tools for sometime now, Linux had a big void in this area until recently. The void has been filled by OpenShot. It is truly amazing and the best, free video editor out there for Linux, suiting the needs of many. OpenShot will be available via Ubuntu Software Center starting with Lucid Lynx. Till then you would have to add the PPA to software sources.

All Android phones sold in the U.S. will be eligible for an Android 2.1 update, although some older phones may need to be wiped first, says an industry report. Meanwhile another report says Google's Nexus One is heading to Verizon on Mar. 23, and an AdMob study explores Android users. News last week that Adobe's Flash Player 10.1 may bypass devices running Android versions prior to 2.0 may not be so dire after all, according to an AndroidandMe story. Citing several unnamed inside sources, Taylor Wimberly writes that every Android phone currently released in the United States will be receiving an upgrade to Android 2.1.

One Android developer is earning more than $400 a day from his find-your-car application, proving it's not just Apple fans who'll pay for basic apps. Much has been made of the millions awaiting those who decide to develop for Apple's iPhone: the UK government even sponsored a help guide. But Google fans will be pleased to hear that there's money in Android too with one developer reporting earnings topping $13,000 a month for an application that remembers where you've parked your car.

Firefox is on a decline. It may not be as steady as Internet Explorer's death spiral, and it certainly has not been going on for as long, but if the last three months are any indication, Firefox will never hit that 25 percent market share mark that looked all but certain just a few short months ago. Meanwhile, Chrome is still pushing steadily forward; in fact, it was the only browser to show positive growth last month.

The Linux from Scratch (LFS) project has released version 6.6 of its building instructions for Linux. The project's manual contains about 300 pages of instructions on how to compile a custom Linux system from the Linux sources. The LFS project aims to help people understand how Linux works internally and to enable them to build compact, flexible and secure Linux distributions of their own.

I don't have the expertise to fully comprehend these NPRMs that were recently issued, but did spend the last few hours reading large chunks of all three. The area they cover is huge, and I fear open source and small EHRs are about to lose big, and big corporate EHRs are about to get total lock-in courtesy of our government. The bills cover a lot of territory, proposing many requirements that I do not think support "meaningful use" requirements. There are numerous interesting items, one surprising to me was that the ONC expects a Certified EHR will cost $163 million over 3 years to develop, excluding costs for testing and certification. The majority of the NPRM is framed with that mindset.