The current debate about whether the open source community should trust Microsoft as the Redmond company continues to make friendlier overtures towards open source practices is, to me, a very interesting discussion... So what is it I think the Linux and open source community should do regarding Microsoft.

Open source moves at a different speed to commercial software. This has become apparent over the last decade as Linux and its open source fellow travellers (Apache, Open Office, MySQL, Firefox ,et al) gradually established their position in the software world.

A recent column on Zdnet, by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, discussed the reasons why people won't change from a retail operating system to a free one. The implication is that Linux can't even give away their software.

Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison, on his first visit Israel last weekend, told TheMarker that collaborative open source software is nothing to be feared, and mocked the "Google-envy" he said Microsoft was suffering.

Proprietary code powers the world banks, networks, voting machines and other critical applications that we regularly interact with. But the real question is where mission critical applications like this can be done with open source code, as many open source advocates would like to see happen.

"So Novell really does now finally seem to own the Unix copyrights. Linux finds itself on a high-ground pedestal of long-term, low-risk use (unless Microsoft buys Novell [should have when they could have, eh?]). And IBM and Novell are closer than ever."

1. First reason, PCLOS is based on KDE, while Ubuntu is based on GNOME.

"The debate over use of the open document format among U.S. states appears to have hit a wall as experts representing both sides of the issue offered few new insights into the subject at a meeting of the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL)."