There’s a lot of chatter going around that open source excels in recession environments. I’m a little on the fence about that claim... but what I’m interested in talking about today is whether open source benefits anyone looking for a job right now. In theory, if open source companies grow in a recession, they should also be hiring.

Do you still doubt the power of the emerging open source IT channel? Consider this: Axilom, a solutions provider based in France, has won a contract to deploy Compiere Inc.’s open source ERP (enterprise resource planning) system for La Poste, a global postal processing organization with 300,000 employees and 45 million customers. Here’s the scoop.

I recently got a note out of the blue from another technology journalist. He wrote, "I know I'm often critical of Linux, but I'm SOOOOO GLAD I installed Ubuntu on my laptop. I installed some patches to Vista and now Vista won't boot, not even in Safe mode. Uggh!"

I have been using KDE 4.2 on both my Gentoo systems (laptop and desktop) since about a week after it was released. I still run it now and plan on running it until the next big release of KDE.

Steve Ballmer's deal with the Catalonian government is seen as a leverage against their existing Open Source strategy.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make the primary operating system used in state schools free and open source.

A representative of Red Hat told a reporter recently that the company, which abandoned desktop Linux years ago in order to devote its energies to the server market, "will indeed be pushing the Linux desktop again."  Such a move would presumably present a challenge to Ubuntu, which has dominated the desktop scene for a long time.  Or would it?