Five years ago, the only engineering or computer science majors setting their sights on a career in writing software code for an open source company were the most hardcore of computer nerds. That was something done only by the true computer geeks, and it usually required an independent source of income. Experienced programmers knew the gravy train existed at proprietary companies.

Though it might not seem that way, the top 10 most vulnerable software vendors - and, yes, that includes Microsoft - are contributing a smaller percentage of all vulnerability disclosures per year compared to five years ago.

The Mozilla Foundation is thinking about creating a separate organization to take control of its Thunderbird e-mail application, allowing it to concentrate on development of the Firefox Web browser.

The first ever Ubuntu Live conference, running concurrently with the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, ran for three days starting on Sunday, and crammed in as many keynotes, sessions, and tutorials as anyone could possibly want.

"The fact that Microsoft has a majority market share in PC desktops is the biggest challenge facing the growth of Ubuntu and free software in general."

SugarCRM is to adopt Version 3 of the GNU general public license (GPLv3) for the next release of its open source CRM software after coming under pressure from its user community to move away from its own Sugar Public License.

Red Hat has bowed to pressure and improved the way it describes partner software licenses on the Red Hat Exchange (RHX). The licenses of companies such as SugarCRM, Zimbra and Alfresco used to be buried on the RHX site, requiring interested customers to spend considerable time finding the documentation.

"People used to think the very idea that a major PC vendor would offer desktop Linux was beyond a joke. It was, as Vizzini from The Princess Bride would have said, "Inconceivable!""