Though sales of the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable are strong, there are many who use the devices exclusively for homebrew applications.

What used to be created by a team of open source programmers is now being done by one or two programmers. I have seen this trend happening with a few different projects recently and found myself wondering if this is what is needed to get more, viable applications in the market - faster.

Five years ago, the only engineering or computer science majors setting their sights on a career in writing software code for an open source company were the most hardcore of computer nerds. That was something done only by the true computer geeks, and it usually required an independent source of income. Experienced programmers knew the gravy train existed at proprietary companies.

This year's Open World Forum 2009, held in Paris, brought together the company heads of open source companies, public and government organisations and customers who use open source, for an exchange of views and an opportunity to map out the future of open source.

Australia's open source community leaders have written an open letter to Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard calling for consideration of free and open source software in the implementation of the Digital Education Revolution for the National Secondary School Computer Fund.

Australia's open source community leaders have written an open letter to Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard calling for consideration of free and open source software in the implementation of the Digital Education Revolution for the National Secondary School Computer Fund.

There is the view that the poor programmers are being used and abused because they are writing free software that unscrupulous freeloading users are taking advantage of... open source programmers have a totally different view of things

While it's pretty painless to convert from commercial office software to an open source version, if you'd like to replace commercial security products with open source counterparts, you'll likely have to do some work. You may need to combine several open source tools to get the functionality you get from a single commercial product.

Open source software has long been accepted as a legitimate software license by tech-savvy crowds. It's become recognised by business. And even the courts are taking seriously open source software authors rights despite the fact no money has changed hands.