The wave of migration from propriety software to open-source applications is gaining momentum as big companies are jumping on the bandwagon to make cost efficiencies and avoid legal charges for piracy.

It worked for software, so why not science? The open source science movement has been gaining momentum, and it's shaping the future of scientific research and discovery.

Digium is taking new steps to promote SwitchVOX unified communications and Asterisk -- the open source IP PBX -- to partners. And the efforts seem to be gaining more momentum. Here are the details.

In reading through IDC's excellent report, "2007 Industry Adoption of Open Source Software, Part 2: Project Adoption," analyst Matt Lawton stumbles across an intriguing observation in open-source software adoption. He apparently believes it is a weakness of the current open-source landscape, but I believe it is a strength. The observation? That IT departments do most of the services around open source, rather than third-party consulting companies.

Sun Microsystems on Monday plans to announce that it will provide support for the OpenOffice.org productivity software suite, citing a wave of momentum behind the open-source project.

Most of the new breed of open source hardware centers on specific products. Bug Labs is taking a different approach. Instead of developing particular devices, Bug Labs' goal is to provide a Lego-like collection of open source hardware and software that customers can use to build their own devices.

As I pointed out recently, open-source software in schools isn't just a good idea, it's becoming a financial necessity if we're to keep enough teachers for our kids in classrooms. So, it's particular good timing that Sugar Labs and openSUSE have released free Linux distributions expressly designed for education.

In the ongoing debate between open source purists and people who appreciate and defend proprietary software, extremists will always have their voices, but many people in the open source community are waking up to the fact that proprietary platforms and applications can co-exist peacefully with open source ones.

With the current economic recession, open source software is a route that some enterprise developers are increasingly considering as a lower-cost alterative to proprietary solutions. However, one of the potential issues with open source software adoption is license compliance—ensuring that developers and enterprises are not in violation with a particular license.