When we talk about virtualization solutions, we tend to talk about specific products offered by specific companies. But when we talk about virtualization solutions with Linux, we instead talk about a rich and diverse open source ecosystem.

Voiceroute, a software PBX vendor, originally started as a proprietary software company but went (at least partly) open source earlier this year. In this video, CEO Ming Guang Yong says the company should have moved toward open source "a lot sooner," and explains why.

The opening talk will be from Lars Knoll of Trolltech who will tell us about their plans for Qt 4.4 and their relationship with KDE. Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical will be talking on the 10 Challenges to Open Source. On Sunday, Dan Kohn of The Linux Foundation will talk on the state of Linux Standardisation on the Desktop.

Back at the 2003 OSCON, r0ml Lefkowitz gave a talk called "Six Missing Open Source Projects".The next year he gave a talk titled "More Missing Open Source Projects". At the top of his first list was CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, systems...

"...Back in February of this year I saw Richard Stallman talk at KTH here in Stockholm and was thoroughly impressed. I plucked up the courage to go up to him after the meeting and talk to him. The resulting conversation ended with him offering to talk in my hometown of Hamilton in New Zealand..."

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the meaning of “open source” being eroded thanks to the likes of Centric CRM and Microsoft with a feeling that Microsoft is out to “corrupt the meaning and value of ‘Open Source’.”

Steve Ballmer is at least willing to talk with the open-source crowd now, as his comments at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008 demonstrate. He's just not willing to actually engage in open source as an appreciable part of his company's business. Fair enough.

I hate to go all Bond villain on Mr. Ballmer, but the question of whether Microsoft talks to open source, about open source, or even engages open source is just not relevant any more.

This past weekend (April 9th and 10th), I had the great pleasure to attend COSSFEST 2010 in Calgary. COSSFEST is the Calgary Open Source Systems Festival, a gathering of people whose passion is free and open source software, coming together to share information, exchange ideas, and otherwise talk about all things FOSS. Oh, and drink beer. And eat, too. Yeah, right . . .