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Technology companies negotiate a particularly messy obstacle course from the moment of conception -- jumping hurdles associated with venture capital, fending off and holding their own with fierce (and worthy) competitors, constantly changing and innovating products and services to meet the demands of the customer base. Open source companies have an additional complicating factor -- the business model is mysterious to many potential customers, and competitors (fierce, worthy, or otherwise) are often 800 pound gorillas with names and logos recognizable to CTO, CIO and Luddite alike.

Even while pushing his new SharePoint cloud services, Steve Ballmer understands the recent Sidekick data loss incident isn't going away. But he's doing his level best to minimize it and its impact on Microsoft's cloud strategy.

There are many Linux based mobile platforms available today: Maemo, Openmoko and Android. Of these, it is probably Android that has created the most noise in and out of open sources circles. Until now however there have not been many successful devices running Google's mobile OS, and the ones that exist didn't present much of a challenge to the iPhone. Things are starting to change however.

In late August we started asking our readers for any questions they had for NVIDIA about Linux and this graphics company's support of open-source operating systems. Twelve pages worth of questions were accumulated and we finally have the answers to a majority of them. NVIDIA's Andy Ritger, who leads the user-space side of the NVIDIA UNIX Graphics Driver team for workstation, desktop, and notebook GPUs, answered these questions. With that said, there are some great, in-depth technical answers and not the usual marketing speak found in many interviews. While Linux is our focus, Andy's team and his answers for the most part apply equally to NVIDIA drivers on Solaris and FreeBSD platforms too. There are many questions that range from the status of new features in their proprietary graphics driver to why it is unlikely there will be any official open-source support from NVIDIA to download percentages of their Linux driver.

This is an introduction to a case study that was published recently, this case study is a good example for everyone of us, if we need to extend the use of opensource and especially Linux we need to start from the basic, that are our children, and the best place where to start , are the schools .

Italian remote access specialist NoMachine announced a version of its X Windows-based, Linux-compatible NX Remote Access solution for small businesses. The NX Small Business Server, which offers up to 10 concurrent sessions, incorporates last month's release of NX 3.4.0, which added multi-monitor support.

You may have heard of Andrew Wyatt, a lead developer for Eeebuntu which recently posted on his personal blog that he is fed up with Ubuntu and he will abandon the project. Well, he is not abandoning Eeebuntu, but instead, Eeebuntu will switch to Debian.

SpringSource (which, it's easy to forget, is now a division of VMware), introduced Spring 3.0 today, a major new version of the company’s Java development framework. SpringSource is targeting developers focused on web and service-based applications with the new release. This release of Spring's framework is the first since VMware's acquisition of the company, and version 3.0 is backward compatible with version 2.5. It has full REST support for web applications.

Some of the best software available is open source, but non-proprietary software has enemies as well as friends. Not surprisingly, then there's been plenty of fog on Capitol Hill about free and open source software (FOSS) for a decade now.

Just how important are computer operating systems, anyway? We're going to get an indication Thursday morning, when Microsoft Corp. is scheduled to launch Windows 7, successor to the much-maligned Windows Vista and what many critics believe is the replacement for Windows XP that Vista should have been. XP will be exactly eight years old next Sunday, and that is kind of old. In late August, Apple Inc. launched Snow Leopard, which has had a good reception among users and critics. I've reviewed Snow Leopard and shall review Windows 7 in due course. My early impressions of Win7 are positive, however.

Americans buy new cell phones every 18 months, Europeans buy them every 15 months, and the Japanese every 9 months. Global replacement rates for digital cameras range between two and three years. And U.S. businesses replace their PCs every four years. Where do most of these used products go? Directly into the trash. Indeed, in the United States alone, consumers throw away 400 million electronic products each year.

[If that hardware ran FOSS it would keep much of it from having to be thrown out in the first place. - Scott]

Linux vendor MontaVista Software is expanding its Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) product offering to include new next generation LTE (define) wireless and networking capabilities. MontaVista Carrier Grade Edition 5.1 is the first major release of the platform in nearly two years, and remains compatible with most of the underlying architecture from the CGE 5.0 release. With MontaVista Carrier Grade Edition Linux widely deployed in network equipment at service providers around the world, change is not always a good thing and neither is being on the bleeding edge of Linux development.

As major PC makers prepare to introduce Windows 7 systems on Oct. 22, upstarts like System76 are maintaining their focus on the Ubuntu market and preparing to preload Ubuntu 9.10 on a range of PCs starting Oct. 29. Here’s a preview of what’s to come.

Two prominent open source applications providers — Open-Xchange and SugarCRM — are partnering to integrate their collaboration and customer relationship management software. The move comes as Open-Xchange recruits SaaS partners and on-premise channel partners to battle Microsoft Exchange. Here’s the scoop.

My "10 Best Linux Distributions of 2009" list drew a bit of disdain from some of my readers, so I thought I'd make it up to them by posting a list of Linux distributions that they like to use. Since I have no way of knowing which of these distributions is better or worse than the others, I've place them in alphabetical order instead of any real ranking based on quality, community, development cycle or other criteria. I want to show you, faithful reader, that I do indeed read your comments and take your feedback seriously. You have a voice and I thank you for using it--this is your list--by you and for you.

MontaVista Software announced a new release of its Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) 4.0 compliant Linux distribution for networking customers, adding support for 4G wireless networks including LTE and WiMAX. MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) 5.1 also integrates OpenSAF High Availability (HA) capabilities and is the first to offer virtual routing and forwarding, says MontaVista.

Monty Widenius, creator of the free MySQL database and for years chief developer of the namesake company, does not want to see his creation handed over to Oracle. In a press release, he writes that he shares the EU Commission's concerns about Oracle's takeover of MySQL from its present owner Sun.

During the Oracle OpenWorld conference (Oct. 11-15, San Francisco), speculation mounted that Oracle was preparing an Unbreakable Linux offering that features the MySQL database — and targets Microsoft’s Windows Server-SQL Server combo. Here’s the scoop.

The release of the newest version of Ubuntu is only 10 days away. Many sites, including MakeTechEasier have covered its pending arrival and given you a glimpse of the Beta version. Today we are going to take a look at Kubuntu, the KDE-based version of Ubuntu.

Verizon Wireless has tipped details about an upcoming Android phone in TV ads that hype a "Droid" phone while bashing Apple's iPhone, says eWEEK. Meanwhile, the Boy Genius Report has published a first-look preview of the Motorola Droid (previously called the "Sholes") and calls it "the Android device to beat."