I was pleased to see the formal announcement yesterday of the OpenSAF Foundation, a new open source project that I've been helping form for the past several months. You can find the the launch press release here, and I've also pasted it in at the end of this blog entry for archival purposes. The Web site for OpenSAF is here.

Fonality has become the first open-source-based VoIP provider to strike a deal with a Tier 1 computer vendor. Starting this February, customers will be able to purchase fully provisioned Fonality VoIP Phone System servers from computer maker Dell. The Fonality VoIP Phone System will come installed on Optiplex 330 PCs, according to Fonality CEO Chris Lyman. Mr. Lyman thinks this is a big moment for open-source-based technologies:

In a speech before the World Economic Forum in Switzerland this week, mega-billionaire Bill Gates is calling for a “creative capitalism” in which businesses build and target products for poorer nations.

Traditional corporate policies for managing software assets are often inadequate to address the unique characteristics of free and open source software, according to HP officials. During a recent customer engagement, for example, HP discovered three times as many FOSS licenses as the client originally thought it held, totaling 75 versus 25.

It is with great pride that the Joomla! community announces to the world the immediate availability of Joomla! 1.5 Stable [Khepri]. As a community of contributors, we have been through celebrations and tribulations. We have had fun, and we have worked hard. We have learned from and helped one another. What started two and a half years ago with a letter to the community has grown into a great opportunity for both the Joomla! project and community to benefit from these efforts and to consider our future.

Yes, invention is the mother of necessity, and my little XO is proof. Since I got it a week ago I’ve added all manner of doo-dads and thingamajigs, usually keeping to the green motif, and sinking at least another 7500 yen into it (that’s about $75, although that amount changes as the stock market flutters ;) ).

OpenStreetMap (OSM) has completed the bulk import of comprehensive street and highway data for the United States, months ahead of the project's original estimates. The massive data set originated with the US Census Bureau's public domain map database, and importing it required a dedicated upload process running around the clock since August 2007. The imported data will still require human editing and error-correction, but the completed task is a major milestone for the OSM project.

"Maemo Wordpy has been updated to the .6 beta and while that’s a small release number, the enhancements are major. Daniel has now built in support for multiple accounts, blogger accounts and posting and pulling images to flickr. If you have been considering how to blog on the go, Maemo WordPy is the answer." -- Overview: http://maemo-wordpy.garage.maemo.org/