US Department of Defense launches Forge.mil. VMware announces View Open Client. SugarCRM previews cloud services. Openbravo appoints Vavision founder to board. The Free Software Song in retrospect. And more.

DOD goes OS
Federal Computer week revealed that the US Department of Defense has created Forge.mil, a hosting site for DOD open source projects. The report indicates that “Forge.mil users must use a common access card for authentication. Smart cards also help control access to sensitive information.”

As does VMware
Well, not quite. But the company has announced an open source client for virtual desktop infrastructure called VMware View Open Client. Available under the GNU LGPL version 2.1, the code is hosted at Googlecode.

SugarCRM gets busy
SugarCRM kicked off its SugarCon 2009 customer event with details on new features such as links to cloud services. It also announced a partnership with Tata Communications, a new training program and DimDim integration via MyCRM.

Actuate reports strong BIRT growth
Actuate released its financial results for Q4 and full year 2008. While totral revenue was down, to $33.2m from $39.2m in the fourth quarter and to $131.0m from $140.6m in the full year, the open source BIRT-related business exceeded $4.5m in Q4 and totaled $15.4m for the year, up 93%.

JP Morgan swaps source code
JP Morgan transfered its CDS Analytical Engine to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. According to the ISDA: “The CDS analytical engine, originally developed by the Quantitative Research group at J.P. Morgan, is widely used in the industry to price CDS contracts. ISDA will make the analytical engine available as open source code, thereby increasing transparency around CDS pricing.”

Novell layoffs
The cuts may not have been as deep as Matt Asay‘s sources originally indicated, but Novell confirmed that it has cut 100 jobs. Nevertheless, the company is also looking to make acquisitions according to CIO.com.

Openbravo gets some Microsoft experience
Openbravo gets a new board member and VP of commercial operations, both with Navision and Microsoft experience. Jesper Balser, Co-Founder and former CEO of Navision, has joined the board of directors, while former Microsoft executive Cees Poortman is VP of Global Commercial Operations.

Perfecting Open Core Licensing
Andrew Lampitt previously defined Open Core Licensing, to explain the strategy of vendors that build proprietary extensions around a core open source project. The strategy theoretically provides a balance between commercial and community user requirements, but that balance is hard to maintain. In his latest post Andrew provides some tips and discusses the role of the Affero GPL.

Open Windows
The open source Windows debate rumbles on. Charles Babcock insists that Windows must go open source to help Microsoft maintains its developer ecosystem and drive down costs. Joe Brockmeier explains why he thinks its not going to happen soon while Stormy Peters waxes theoretical on what it might mean.

The best of the rest
InfoWorld notes that Andi Gutmans has taken the reigns at Zend Technologies as Harold Goldberg has departed the PHP tools company.

What do community managers, you know, do? asks Joe Brockmeier.

Andrew Lampitt reports that zAgile is going open source.

Baseline provides some tips for taming the wild open source implementation.

LimeWire creator brings open source approach to urban planning reports Wired.

The Free Software Song in a Previous Life
“All I can say is…. holy christ, this was 9 years ago. And it’s still just as embarrassing today as it was then – but because I’m further removed now, I can LMAO about it ” John Mark Walker