"Consider this: in just a few short years, the open-source
encyclopedia Wikipedia has made closed-source encyclopedias obsolete —
both the hard-bound kind and the CD-ROM or commercial online kind.
Goodbye World Book and Brittanica...

How do you apply the principles behind open source to open hardware? It's not easy, but early examples are beginning to emerge, including not one but *two* open source car projects. As ever, a big problem is finding the right kind of licence.

ERP has been a kind of final frontier for open source software. But now more IT leaders at midsize and smaller businesses are saying yes to open source software for ERP systems that pump the very heart of the business.

A census of open source developers has provided a sharp reminder of the necessity of commercially viable open source companies, and also how important it is that commercially viable open source companies employ good people to write open source. This probably isn't news to Reg readers, for whom it might be bleeding obvious - perhaps even tautological.

Open source icon Stormy Peters says enterprises have embraced open software, but often need help with troubleshooting it

While 2008 has been a bleak year for the financial markets and the global economy, it has been very kind to open source, at least based on market share. A review of Net Applications data suggests that there has never been a better time for open source; however, as Google Trends data suggests, it's no longer enough to rest on one's open-source laurels.

Open source continues finding favor in both large enterprises and small companies. But while the nature and types of deployments may vary wildly, many have at least one thing in common: The bottom line. Cost savings from Linux and open source has long been a key selling point of the movement.

I hear daily about open source projects, the open source business model, what it means in terms of freedom, choice, risks, investment, etc... What I rarely hear about is what is life like for those who actually contribute and dedicate a part of their life to open source?

The Pitfalls of Open Source Litigation ran a couple of days ago. It painted a picture of Open Source software as being a minefield of grumpy litigious geeks who want to cash in with fat lawsuits, and no clear guidance for how to stay out of trouble. Oddly, this all seemed to come from a most unlikely source, the director of the Gnome Foundation, Stormy Peters.