Mobile open source player Funambol is certainly giving us plenty to watch these days with its Affero GPL licensing, its use of ad-supported mobile phone access to email and general bet on mobile open source software.

Most open source marketing is easy. You push to convert people who have already downloaded the product.

The leader of Microsoft’s integration efforts around open source software and its proprietary technologies is expanding his role by adding the title "general manager of Windows server marketing," further indication that Microsoft plans to crank up the volume on its Windows/Linux story.

Though I have my doubts, PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles) may be on the same track towards open hardware we are seeing in some computer components and devices. Be warned, however, the effort is grounded in marketing and survival instincts that just might not suffice to become a success.

Pentaho, the commercial open source alternative for business intelligence (BI), today announced that Zack Urlocker, vice president of products in Sun's database group and previous EVP of products for MySQL AB, has joined Pentaho's Board of Directors. He will apply his proven success in a wide range of areas spanning products, marketing, sales, and partners.

Here's a fascinating document coming from Microsoft – actually a job advertisement for the post of Senior Marketing Manager – Open Source Community. One of his jobs: to move free and open source away from free and open source GNU/Linux and to the closed and propriatery Windows.

I received Gartner e-mail this week marketing their up-coming open-source summit. The message contains gems that illuminate Gartner's perspective on open source and the larger IT world.

If you've been scanning the news today, you might be under the impression that VIA Technologies had released an open-source notebook design. The OpenNote mini-note reference design has gotten a a sudden burst of press attention, but most of the stories don't seem to understand what's really open about this design.

I am often dismayed by the misappropriation of the term open source. Companies apply the term to products that are free though not open source. It’s a classic marketing maneuver to leverage a brand that already has broad recognition.