Red Hat has signed a pair of agreements with Sun Microsystems that will help put the open source company on the fast track to delivering a more complete end-to-end application development and runtime stack for its Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers.

Talend is an open source data integration company that is a poster child for successful open source business models. In just a few short years they have risen to be one of the up and coming stars in a 13b dollar market.

Together, Isaac Garcia and Arnulf Hsu have launched several successful businesses, including two that were eventually purchased by CNET. Garcia and Hsu were firmly in the Microsoft development camp, but recently they noticed what they call the increasing maturity of open source software. They decided to launch their latest endeavor, CentralDesktop.com (CD), using an open source platform.

In 2005, Michael Dortch, executive editor and director of IT infrastructure management strategies at the Robert Frances Group, penned a report comparing Linux application server total cost of ownership (TCO) with Microsoft's Windows and Sun Microsystems' Solaris.

Zend, one of the lead commercial PHP vendors, today announced that they have received another $9 million in venture capital funding, led by Greylock Partners. So my question is - if Zend is already successful, both in terms of technology and customers why does it still need additional venture funding?

Once again, the buzz has grown surrounding rumors that Novell may soon be snapped up in a buyout. As many as 20 companies may have registered bids for the company, according to the Wall Street Journal. Matt Asay notes that an auction of the company could become a patent troll bonanza, and I have to agree. Let's remember that Novell is no spring chicken.

In a time when Microsoft is feeling the full impact of the global economic downturn, the open-source Linux operating system is flourishing.

OpenOffice.org Conference 2008 -- Beijing, China -- 05 Nov 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced the launch of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) Toolkit Union, a new open-source software community project organized to make document software more innovative, versatile and useful for business.

Sun Microsystems' most recent quarter took a hit from a slumping U.S. economy, according to Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz. Revenue from Sun's server computers and storage products fell 2.8 percent. The company plans up to 2,500 job cuts as it seeks to balance expenses with growth.