Is Microsoft’s TomTom suit about GPL violation? Red Hat sued for patent infringement. Transparency, transparency, transparency. New CEO at Acquia. Why counting downloads is pointless. Open Source Think Tank. In-Vehicle Infotainment. And more.

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More patent-related fun and games
Glyn Moody reported this week that a hidden issue behind Microsoft’s TomTom lawsuit is violation of the GPL. Moody cited comments made by Jeremy Allison that Microsoft’s patent agreements are “intended to force Tom Tom to violate the GPL, or change to Microsoft embedded software.”

It’s more than likely that Jeremy has been talking to a number of journalists so its no great surprise to see Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reporting the same thing. However, SJVN appeared to get confirmation of the plan from none other than Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of intellectual property and licensing.

When asked specifically if “there are companies using Linux and open-source software, which have signed FAT patent cross-licensing agreements, such as the ones, which TomTom has refused to agree to?” Gutierrez replied, “Yes, other companies have signed FAT patent licenses, both in the context of patent cross licensing agreements and other licensing arrangements.”

Meanwhile Red Hat’s JBoss business was hit with a patent infringement lawsuit by a company called Software Tree. The suit relates to the implementation of Hibernate and also named Dell, HP, and Genuitec as defendants.

Transparency is the new black
The openness meme continued apace with Clay Shirky proclaiming “Transparency is the new marketing” via McKinsey and Co and Chris Messina writing about “Generation Open”. In The Guardian, Victor Keegan asked “Can we build a world with open source?” The world has changed for the better, but how long is it before openness jumps the shark? Maybe it already has.

All change at Acquia
Acquia announced the appointment of Tom Erickson as chief executive officer and Warren Utt as vice president of sales and launched a beta release of Acquia Search as well as cloud-based Drupal hosting services. Erickson explained to InternetNews his plan for growing open source Drupal with commercial solutions.

Indispensable tools for busy open source executives
I’ve been looking around for an exhaustive list of open source related conferences for some time. The search is over, thanks to Init Marketing. Meanwhile make sure you never get embarrassed by not being able to differentiate the variety of different open source-related business strategies with Carlo Daffara’s cut-out-and-keep business model at-a-glance cheat sheet. Now with added details on economic motivations! Great stuff from Carlo, as usual.

What happened at the Open Source Think Tank?
If, like me, you failed to make it to Olliance Group’s Open Source Think Tank (again) and you can’t wait for the official report, you could do worse than checking out the blog posts of Éric Barroca, CEO of Nuxeo. His first report covers business cases, community engagement and exit strategies, while the second covers open source for SMBs. Almost as good as being there, although without the wine tasting. Obviously.

Best of the rest
# Adam Jollans, IBM: Why Open Computing matters for Government IT.

# Stephen Walli explained why counting downloads is misleading and suggests community metrics that should be measured instead.

# Linux Foundation announced plans to build a new Linux.com community.

# The Register: Sun loses Apache and Spring vote on latest Enterprise Java.

# The Inquirer: Microsoft megadeal gives UK.gov indigestion.

# Dawn Foster published an eBook on companies and communities as well as an article entitled What Does it Take to Manage a Community?

# Sean Michael Kerner on Cisco’s progress as an open source contributor.

# Wind River reported revenue up 9% to $359.8m in fiscal 2009. Net income was $10.8m, compared to a net loss of $2.4m in 2008.

# Anthony Gold is to focus on the Open Solutions Alliance full time.

# Concurrent pitched RedHawk real-time Linux OS for use in embedded systems.

# BMW Group, Delphi, General Motors, Intel, Magneti Marelli, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Visteon, and Wind River launched an alliance for open source collaboration on In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) systems.

# The Open Source Business Foundation launched SOA for cloud computing based on the open source SOA platform Sopera ASF.

# Slashdot reported on a New York bill that proposes tax credit for open source developers. Similar idea pitched in 2006, then again in 2007.

# The Apache Software Foundation named Qpid a top-lLevel project.

# Affero Gnu Public License (AGPLv3) for LingPipe 4.0?