Lately, Microsoft has been trying really, really hard to appear as open source’s best friend. All I can say is: “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”

On their blogs, Matt Asay and Savio Rodrigues are discussing whether IBM is using open source to diminish competitor margins. I think it is obvious that IBM does this, most notably with its Linux engagement, which is squarely directed against Microsoft (Windows). It is what I call a war over the share of customer’s wallet, and open source plays a major role. The graph below shows how it works.

Further progress for Microsoft's attempted assimilation with the #1 rival

After reading a recent press release about System Center Operations Manager 2007 being able to “manage Unix/Linux”, the first thought that goes through my head is WTF? Who in their right mind would touch that product?

Check out Nokia’s point of view on What Mobile Users Need and How Open Source Can Help, in the words of Ari Jaaksi. Building upstream following community rules is in the heart of this plan. This is what Nokia has been doing, learning and contributing back a lot. Now it’s time to dive deeper.

Linux is in great danger at the moment. That danger started when Microsoft cut their deal with Novell. Many open source advocates recognized this and there was a hue and cry over it. This furor has died down to a large extent and apathy has set in. To combat this the FSF brought out their GPLv3 but this seems to be too little too late.