Untangle, which develops open source security solutions, has a rather interesting pitch for solutions providers and managed service providers. It involves a simple USB stick known as the Silver Bullet. Here’s the scoop.

Does Linux have what it takes to meet the needs of the corporate desktop? Jack Wallen thinks so. Here’s his list of office apps that can handle everything from word processing to project management to data backups.

During a phone chat today, a Web developer asked The VAR Guy if the US financial crisis would send more corporate customers running out to buy low-cost open source solutions. The VAR Guy’s surprising answer: No. Here’s why.

No matter what happens to the bailout, it's a safe bet that times are going to be hard. So what can you do if you're not in Congress and you want to get new programs, but not pay an arm and a leg?

When a network is small and most of its users interact chiefly with services on the Internet at large, it's easy to get by simply by assigning numeric Internet Protocol addresses to your nodes rather than names. As the network grows, however, and as internal services (wikis, mail servers, media servers, and more) come online, recalling numeric addresses becomes unwieldy.

Motorola is reportedly readying itself for a big push into the new Android mobile software system. The company is said to be on a hiring frenzy for Android developers, upping its staff in that department from 50 to 350. If anyone needs a big hit, it's Motorola.

I wasn't at the Linux Plumber Conference in Portland, OR, but everyone who pays close attention to Linux knows that Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux kernel developer and Novell engineer, blasted Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, for contributing "In the past 3 years, from the 2.6.15 kernel to 2.6.27-rc6, Canonical has had 100 patches in the Linux kernel."

Ringside Networks was a very cool company - one of the best new open-source companies, as I wrote earlier this year. The company had a dream similar to Ning's - to make social networking-type applications an integral part of a wide array of websites and enterprises.