IBM and Sun: the story continues. Jaspersoft updates open source BI. OIN hints at response to FAT patents. GroundWork partners with Pentaho. Moblin goes to the Linux Foundation. Updates for Mindtouch and DimDim. The touchless iCar. And more.

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IBM and Sun: the story continues
The New York Times DealBook reported that IBM is near a deal for Sun at about $9.50 per Sun share, down on the $10 per share initially reported. The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, priced the deal at $9.55 per share and cited people familiar with the talks as saying that “Sun is demanding assurances that IBM will push to complete a deal even if it faces vigorous regulatory objections to the plan”.

Fool me once, shame on… shame on you… Fool me… Can’t get fooled again
April 1 brought out the usual bunch of open source-related April Fool’s stories, including the umpteenth repeat of the suggestion that Microsoft is going to open source Windows. Meanwhile ITwire’s spoof about Microsoft acquiring Novell was apparently a little too believable for some people, while the Free™ and Open™ Cloud Alliance™ took on a life of its own.

For me, the best posts, for humour value, were Savio Rodrigues’s suggestion that Marc Fleury was going to acquire Sun (“Marc invested his proceeds from JBoss very wisely. You read that dude’s blog over the past two years? Yeah, but did you understand any of it? I mean credit swaps, tier 1 capital, TARP. WTF?”) and you have to admire the effort put in to Funambol’s touchless iCar.

Best of the rest
# Jaspersoft expanded its business intelligence suite with integrated analysis capabilities.

# Open Invention Network CEO suggested there will be a response to Microsoft TomTom settlement.

# GroundWork partnered with Pentaho for Business Intelligence integration.

# MindTouch announced MindTouch 2009 development platform for rich apps.

# Intel turned its Moblin Linux operating system over to the Linux Foundation.

# Amazon launched Elastic MapReduce.

# DimDim updated its open source web conferencing software.

# OpenX announced ad server growth and revenue traction based on open source software.

# SGI threw in the towel; agreed to be acquired by Rackable Systems for $25m.

# Sun dropped another 1,500 people.

# KnowledgeTree’s Daniel Chalef commented on OSBC, community engagement and contributor agreements.

# The 451′s Steve Coplan wondered whether an open source approach have helped with Microsoft’s ILM2 delay.

# Carlo Daffara presented the new FLOSSMETRICS way of estimating the liveness/risk of an OSS project.

# WSJ: In Challenge to Microsoft, PC Makers Test Laptops Running Google Software.

# H-online: The Open Source Enterprise Trap.

# Alok Mohan joined WSO2 board of directors.

# ePractice.eu: Germany’s gov will increase knowledge on open source & make OS software available to public authorities.

# Medsphere updated its OpenVista flagship open source electronic health record.

# Jimmy Wales closed the doors on Wikia Search.

# OpenSplice DDS open source data distribution service middleware is poised to go live on April 20 2009.