Microsoft contributes to Linux. Acquia raises $8m. And more.

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Microsoft contributes to Linux
Microsoft announced that it is to contribute device driver code to the Linux kernel under the GPLv2. Prompting us to publish a CAOS Theory Q&A. Answering one questioning we failed to ask, ZDnet reported that Microsoft’s Linux contributions should find their way into the 2.6.32 release.

Acquia raises $8m
Mass High Tech reported Acquia has picked up an $8m second funding round from existing investors. The funding was later confirmed by the company.

# Adobe released Flash Platform Media and Text Frameworks as open source.

# Red Hat replaced CIT in the S&P 500.

# The recent spate of posts about licensing continued as Dirk Riehle argued that every license has its time and place and examined the intellectual rights imperative of single-vendor open source. Meanwhile Matt Asay noted that the right business strategy is openness, but defining that strategy is variegated, while Tarus Balog explained why reports on the death of the GPL are greatly exaggerated.

# Bradley Kuhn described Microsoft’s patent deal with Buffalo as free software-targeted patent aggression.

# Engine Yard launched Cloud services platform and GA of Flex, a cloud service plan for Rails apps.

# City of Chicago selected SpringSource Hyperic HQ Enterprise to run and manage IT and Web operations.

# Take Off Technology is sponsoring two new support for Solaris/and integration with the ZFS filesystem in openQRM.

# Alfresco’s Nancy Garrity presented the case for community involvement with commercial open source.

# “I’m giving [Microsoft] its divorce papers,” says City of Edmonton CIO, according to an Information Exec report.

# Canonical has released the source code for Launchpad.

# Percona released v6 of its XtraDB storage engine for MySQL.

# HadoopDB is a new open source project combining DBMS and MapReduce technologies to target analytical workloads.

# Dr Dobbs Q&A with MySQL’s creator, Michael “Monty” Widenius.

# Accenture announced that it is to acquire Symbian professional services operations from Nokia.