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In a recent survey by Packt Publishing, 70% of software developers said that they have donated time, money, or both to open source projects. However, with large projects like Wikipedia receiving over one million dollars from just three charitable foundations last year, the question remains whether open source really needs individual contributions from developers to survive.

The enterprises, vendors, developers, analysts, and journalists I speak with regularly are mostly pretty savvy about the basics of open source at this point. Even if they're not licensing geeks or otherwise expert in all the minutiae and subtle implications of open-source development, community, and usage, they generally have the important basics down.

Fred Trotter writes: I have recently been asked to testify at the NCVHS hearings on meaningful use (see forwarded message below). This is very likely because I have been working as a representative of the FOSS community with CCHIT to resolve the basic incompatibility with current CCHIT certification and FOSS EHR systems. For a decent summary you can read the CCHIT category on my blog or read some of the mainstream blogs: slashdot and ZDnet Now I will be asked to testify on what 'Meaningful Use' of EHR systems means from a FOSS perspective. I am having discussions on what I should cover on both Hardhats (VistA community) and OpenHealth (larger FOSS community). Feel free to email me off-line (fred dot trotter at gmail dot com) or simply reply to this thread, with your thoughts.

The "Proprietary Tax" makes Linux's true cost come out to $1000 cheaper than Windows or OS X, due to the excessive software and cat litter costs associated with proprietary operating systems.

Red Hat commissioned the Georgia Institute of Technology – Georgia Tech, to research the state of open source around the world, and has now presented the results of the research as the Open Source Activity Map and Open Source Environment Map. The interactive maps let users see how the seventy five countries examined for the project, rank globally. The activity map is based on concrete factors; existing open source and open standards and numbers of open source users.

The economic situation is eating into your profits, and the MS Office licenses look more expensive than before. OpenOffice.org is a free office suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, slide presentation, drawing program, and database. It’s compatible with practically all operating systems and runs well on old and new computers alike.

Ubuntu 9.04 - officially launched today and due to be ready for download on Thursday - is a worthwhile upgrade for Ubuntu fans. Ubuntu steward Canonical has been working hard to improve the look and feel of Ubuntu and the Jaunty Jackalope edition brings quite a few refreshing touches to the old exterior. The default theme is still the familiar brown, but numerous small improvements to dialog boxes, splash screens, and a flashy new login screen give Ubuntu a slicker, more professional feel. There's also a new theme named New Wave that's a nice mashup between the DarkRoom and the default Human theme.

Did Larry Ellison do something right this time? Oh, say it ain't so.

You've probably heard the phrase "Write once, run anywhere." But if you want to write for an application that runs in a cloud, you really have to know what you're doing. Here in Part 2 of this "Realities of open source cloud computing" series, learn how to write an application using PHP to run on the Aptana cloud computing platform. Explore some of the critical design differences between a cloud application and a traditional N-tier application. The concepts are illustrated with a seemingly simple application, using familiar open source technologies, that taps into the strengths of cloud computing.

Following weeks of speculation over whether and on what terms IBM would purchase Sun, it's now database giant Oracle which is to take over the ailing business, with the result that OpenSolaris, Java, MySQL and OpenOffice are now under new management.

I'd thought about Oracle buying Sun. But, then I thought, "Larry Ellison isn't that dumb." Well, I was wrong. Ellison is that dumb. Oracle is buying Sun in what may be the most moronic technology acquisition of the 21st century. I've looked at the Oracle/Sun deal. I've read Ellison's explanation as to why the buyout makes sense. I don't see it. I don't see any upside to this deal. And, on top of that, Oracle, which spent $7.4 billion for Sun, vastly overpaid for the company. This deal will make money for Sun's executives and stockholders, but it will prove to be a disaster for Sun's users, developers, and employees.

More layoffs are expected at Sun Microsystems Inc. as a result of Oracle Corp.'s planned $7.4 billion acquisition, with one Wall Street analyst predicting today that as many as 10,000 people could lose their jobs at the Silicon Valley icon. Oracle expects that Sun's operations will contribute $1.5 billion in operating profits during the software vendor's next fiscal year and $2 billion the following year. That would make the Sun deal "more profitable in per-share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined," Oracle President Safra Catz said as part of the buyout announcement, referring to the three other large acquisitions made by Oracle in recent years.

Database giant Oracle has agreed to purchase Sun Microsystems in a deal worth $7.4 billion, according to a story in eWEEK. Oracle wants Sun more for its hardware than its software, and may choose to jettison Sun's open source offerings, including MySQL, says eWEEK. The $7.4 billion deal, or about $9.50 a share, is considerably more than the $6.5 billion that IBM had offered the struggling technology firm before talks broke down earlier this month, notes today's story by Nicholas Kolakowski in our sister publication eWEEK. Sun’s board of directors is said to have unanimously approved the transaction, which should close sometime this summer.

Feel like your /etc/passwd file isn't giving 100%? This script may be for you ;)

Canonical this afternoon debuted its Ubuntu 9.04 release of Linux, the tenth release since the company founded the Ubuntu project in October 2004. This iteration of Ubuntu, code-named "Jaunty Jackalope," comes with mixes designed specifically for three platforms: netbooks, desktops, and servers.

Martin Kool, a developer from Web applications specialist Q42, has released his open source multi-player game engine. Sarien.net is a "portal for reliving the classic Sierra On-Line adventure games" and is completely browser based. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome are all supported.

During out last meeting there was a question about what we will be doing with people that carry their kids along with them to the location. That's where you come into scene. Would you be kind enough to provide us at FLISoL Bogotá with say, 15 or 20 of those installation CDs/DVDs? We won't be using them to install Windows on the computers, don't have to worry about it. I will personally hand them out to the kids so that they use them to play around (as frisbies or just to scratch on their surface) while we are on our stuff. I know that your OS is a toy OS and so we should install them on the kids computers, but I refuse to.

When Oracle Corp. agreed to buy Sun Microsystems Inc. today, it took a leap into the hardware realm. And so the obvious question is: Can the software-centric database and applications vendor succeed with Sun's hardware business? "I'll hand it to Larry Ellison: That man can shop," said Laura DiDio, an analyst at Information Technology Intelligence Corp., a research and consulting firm in Boston. "This deal is very, very complementary for Oracle. It gives them instant credibility with hardware, virtualization, open source, storage and cloud computing."

Qt Software and the KDE e.V. are happy to report that they are sponsoring a developer sprint for all North American students accepted into Google Summer of Code 2009 to work on KDE. The event will be completely free for all accepted students, with round-trip flights, lodging, and some meals fully reimbursed; all students that applied for GSoC 2009 are welcome to attend, although those not accepted into the program will not be reimbursed for travel and lodging expenses.

There are many things which could be said to be a part of the Unix philosophy. One of those, certainly, is that the operating system should stay out of the user's way to the greatest extent possible, even if said user is intent on doing something harmful. There is a classic quote attributed to Eric Allman:

"Unix gives you just enough rope to hang yourself -- and then a couple of more feet, just to be sure."