Open source and SMBs. New funding for Lucid Imagination. And more.

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On open source and SMBs
Savio Rodrigues contrasted Dell’s plans to target SMBs with bundles of hardware and open source with research from Forrester that indicated that SMBs are still wary of open source, while Matt Asay noted that there are significant opportunities for open source vendors if they can work out how to crack the SMB market and suggested that the way to make software easier for SMBs and to monetize it might actually be cloud-based computing.

OStatic noted that the issue may well be one of lack of awareness and that Dell’s initiative, as well as the Open Source Channel Alliance, might tip the scale in favour of open source, an idea echoed by Dana Blankenhorn.

We previously covered the issue of open source and SMBs in our report, ‘CAOS Five-The SMB market opportunity,’. For details on that, and other recent discussion around the opportunity for open source, SMBs and the channel, see Jay’s recent post.

Best of the rest
# Lucid Imagination secured strategic investment from In-Q-Tel.

# Citrix delivered XenServer 5.5.

# SFLC filed an amicus brief in Jacobsen v. Katzer.

# Matt Asay reported on Tim O’Reilly explaining why open source purists trying to answer the wrong question. The original podcast is available here.

# EnterpriseDB released version 8.3R2 of Postgres Plus Advanced Server.

# Scalix implemented ActiveSync as part of expanded Microsoft-Xandros license and collaboration agreement.

# CodeWeavers released CrossOver 8.0.

# Wind River announced the availability of Wind River Hypervisor.

# GroundWork Open Source announced GroundWork Monitor 6.0 beta.

# Jeremy Zawodny - Drizzle: rethinking the MySQL database kernel.

# Pentaho provided details of the world’s largest open source BI deployment - brought to you by Specsavers, Pentaho, and Red Hat.

# Opsera released OpsMailmanager v1.5, which extends Alfresco ECM for enterprise email management.

# SourceForge appointed the former World Wrestling Entertainment COO to its board of directors.

# Mark Logic released MarkLogic Toolkit for Excel under the Apache license.

# Magnolia International announced the availability of Magnolia 4.1 open source content management.

# Mike Hogan reported on MySQL is only as good as its ecosystem, explaining how Oracle could potentially marginalize MySQL as a hobbyist tool.