Open-source developers targeting the mobile space need to learn business rules including digital rights management, Nokia's software chief has claimed.

Open source developers need to guard their intellectual property rights if they want to compete with the big boys, says Martin Brampton.

One of the greatest tragedies of intellectual property law is how it generates intellectual confusion among successful businesspeople. Many are under the impression, even when it is not true, that they owe their wealth to copyrights, trademarks, and patents and not necessarily to their business savvy.

For this reason, they defend intellectual property as if it were the very lifeblood of their business operations. They fail to give primary credit where it is due: to their own ingenuity, willingness to take a risk, and their market-based activities generally. This is often an empirically incorrect judgment on their part, and it carries with it the tragedy of crediting the state for the accomplishments that are actually due to their own entrepreneurial activities.

In the latest part of "An Open Source Business", we take a look at the online music world and the business models for competing with or even making a business out of "free."

If open source wants to get around European procurement rules and tap the government market there can’t be differences between commercial and community versions of their products.

Open source has become standard in Silicon Valley, with nearly every software startup planning to release at least some code. So far, they've found five main business models:

Along with the Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting, the Open Source Business Conference was one of the two best conferences I've been to recently (I generally hate conferences). I got my geek on at: FOSDEM and actually enjoyed and learned from the technical sessions. Where OSBC is at the other end of the spectrum with business sessions, so I got my suit on.

But even Microsoft's childlike "that's mine" attitude about intellectual property and patent violation claims against open source doesn't explain the company's resistance to Red Hat. The question to ask: Whose intellectual property rights is Microsoft seeking to protect?

The model train business isn't exactly the font of software innovation. But a lawsuit over the rights to a hobbyist's code could be a huge boost for developers of open source programs. It could also make some businesses think again about using open source software.