The Burton Group put out a report praising and recommending Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) document format over the Open Document Format (ODF). The report says choosing the ISO-approved ODF amounts to a political statement against Microsoft (which may count for more than stated given new investigations and sentiment in Europe). Burton Group concedes that [...]

It says here. Yes, the same Sun that’s spent the last two years building a PostgreSQL support business. Funnily enough, Jonathan Schwartz doesn’t mention PostgreSQL in his announcement blog post. One thing he does mention is that the company plans to introduce new support options for MySQL. “I’ve asked our team to negotiate an arms’ [...]

Second-tier Linux distributors Mandriva and Turbolinux have been quietly working together since October on a joint project called Manbo-Labs to create a unified Linux base to underpin their respective distributions. If that rings a bell it’s probably because it’s not the first time the companies have worked together on such a project. It’s not even [...]

News that the Italian Corte dei Conti is adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux is interesting. Even more so when you consider the role the Corte dei Conti plays and recent complaints regarding the apparent re-allocation of state funds previously committed to open source development. Questions have recently been raised by Italian open source supporters as [...]

Engine Yard obtains $3.5m in funding. Breach Security reports big revenue jump in 2007. IONA appoints a new CFO. (and more)

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Fortune magazine has published a list of its hot IPO tips for 2008. Three out of the five – MySQL, Ingres and SugarCRM – are open source companies, while another – Parallels – is an open source project sponsor (for the record, the other Fortune tip is ExactTarget). Here’s a look at Fortune’s assessment of [...]

Exist Global acquires DevZuz. Mozilla appoints new CEO. OLPC raises $35m in giving campaign. (and more)

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Becta, the UK government agency responsible for technology in the education sector has promised to do more to promote the use of open source software within schools and colleges and has warned educational institutions in the UK against upgrading to Windows Vista and Microsoft Office. Becta on Wednesday published its full report in to Vista [...]

I was eager to read the Open Solutions Alliance open source CEO predictions for 2008, figuring it would have some interesting thoughts and perspectives on the open source year ahead. However, I had no idea the forward-looking statements would apply to me, personally and directly. One did. Adaptive Planning CEO William Soward, in the first [...]

2007 ended with a change at the top of the biggest open source vendor as Red Hat appointed Jim Whitehurst as its new CEO, replacing Matthew Szulik. 2008 has begun with further chief executive changes at Mozilla and Open-Xchange, while Novell is on the look out for a new general counsel. Former Mozilla Corp COO, [...]

How can software vendors engage with the open source community? An important step, according to Linus Torvalds, is to stop believing such a thing really exists and start engaging in the development process. The Linux Foundation has kicked off its new Open Voices podcast series with an interview between executive director Jim Zemlin and its [...]

Intel quits One Laptop Per Child. New study predicts Linux market to triple in five years. OpenMoko to unveil consumer handset. (and more)

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Henry Blodget is a name I haven’t heard in a while. The former securities analyst, who is banned from the securities industry for life following allegations of fraud, has returned to the headlines this week with his suggestion that the Mozilla Foundation could and should file for IPO this year or next. Blodget’s theory has [...]

I wanted to be among the first to post about how 2008 looks to be the year of desktop Linux (half jokingly, of course). Then I thought about how far the Linux OS has to go before it is approaching even Apple’s slice of the market (which by the way is getting bigger). Fact is, [...]

Jaron Lanier’s Long Live Closed-Source Software! is well worth a read if for no other reason than it challenges a number of assumptions about the value of open source software. For the same reason, it should be read in conjunction with the numerous critiques that have followed. Lanier’s argument is that the open source movement [...]

OpenMoko becomes independent venture. Concurrent risks NASDAQ delisting. Celunite becomes Azingo. (and more)

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NB The figures originally reported here were preliminary and have been revised for a formal CAOS report to be published in the first half of 2009. The figures for Q4 have been removed or updated, while those for the full year have been updated: “I believe last year was actually the peak year of open [...]