I have been trying to digest two unrelated stories from last week. The first was the report by the Standish Group on the $60 Billion dollars open source is purported to be costing the proprietary software industry. The second was Steve Reubel’s, “The Web 2.0 World is Skunk Drunk on Its Own Kool-Aid“. As I looked introspectively into these stories I wondered how relevant they were.

There are two stories posted on Linux Today that I knew I was going to rant about as soon as I saw them: Nominum Solves Kaminsky Attack, and Novell's iPrint Open to Attack, Say Researchers. What do these stories have in common? I was thinking perhaps institutionalized delusional thinking and incompetence, but maybe I'm being too harsh.

When I first found out about open source software, I felt the sky was the limit — with the source code, I could do anything now! But after working on open source ERP for the last seven years, I’ve come to realize that customizing software, even open source software, should not be taken lightly.

I'm a fan of many kinds of offbeat open source efforts, and the idea of community contributions can be applied to any number of pursuits, as seen previously in this post. This week I came across a few eyebrow-raising open source stories worthy of another short roundup. Here, you'll find four unusual examples of left-field open source in action.

I hear daily about open source projects, the open source business model, what it means in terms of freedom, choice, risks, investment, etc... What I rarely hear about is what is life like for those who actually contribute and dedicate a part of their life to open source?

According to Fortune, Open Source is slowly gaining acceptance in the corporate world. More and more corporates are beginning to see the merits of Open Source and have started embracing it. But all these changes didn't happened overnight. It was rather a painful journey. '

We love feel-good stories about how open source software helps improve living conditions in third-world countries or comes to the rescue in times of crisis, but this one really takes the cake.

Everyone loves open source software. After all… its free! Many times I’ve heard the question, “what are the most popular open source applications of all time?” I decided to find out.

In all the stories about Microsoft’s attack on open source, I have seen little talk about what the company is gaining in all this.