Are open source vendors more efficient? The Eclipse Foundation’s mobile application development tools project. Black Duck launches open source software management suite. Is open source capitalist or communist? And more.

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Is open source more efficient?
It’s been a quiet week so far. Almost too quiet. Thank goodness Savio Rodrigues is busy stirring things up with his analysis of whether open source vendors really are more capital efficient than proprietary vendors. Savio compared the operating expenses for Red Hat and Microsoft and concluded that mature open source vendors cannot be said to be more capital efficient than proprietary vendors.

Savio was taken to task about the fact that Red Hat and Microsoft are at different stages of maturity, and the fact that he had such a small sample, while Carlo Daffara maintained that “savings due to the adoption of OSS are not inherently visible in balance sheets, but appear as better quality product or as the capability of producing goods at a lower price point”.

Undeterred Savio responded by comparing Red Hat with Tibco and coming to the same conclusion. His central point, which has become somewhat lost, is that if open source vendors are not more efficient, then they are making a mistake in leading their marketing campaigns on price.

Of course the main reason for that is that startups compete on price to create and installed base. Unfortunately public figures are not available for private open source startups to see if they are truly more efficient or just running at a loss to build share.

Either way it’s good to have Savio encouraging debate and challenging preconceptions. I hereby challenge him to answer the following question: “Does commercial open source software *really* reduce vendor lock-in?”

The best of the rest
# The Eclipse Foundation launched Pulsar, a new mobile application development tools project.

# Black Duck launched Black Duck Suite covering the management, compliance and security challenges of deploying open source.

# From the End of the Beginning to the Beginning of the End – Michael Tiemann on Microsoft vs. TomTom.

# Bruce Perens: Is Open Source Capitalist or Communist? (Spoiler: It’s both – and neither).

# Matt Asay on the importance of the subscription model in treating software as a process, rather than a product. Although, as he points out, the approach is by no means unique to open source.

# Brian Kahin on Microsoft versus TomTom and the potential high price for Microsoft.

# Jonathan Schwartz’s latest video blog the subject of covered technology adoption within Sun’s open source strategy.

# Roberto Galoppini and Fabrizio Capobianco on the differences between Funambol’s Community and Carrier Editions.

# Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols speculates that comments from Google’s CEO suggest that Google/Linux netbooks may be coming.