Can open source fight patents?

Open source means different things to different people and it can be a software development methodology, a distribution technique, or a marketing gimmick, but could it also be a way to minimise patent infringement damages?, asks CNET News.

Brian Prentice, a research vice-president with Gartner's emerging trends and technologies group, speculates that it just might be.

Google has been actively developing open source alternatives to leading proprietary products, like Google Wave to compete with Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint.

In a bid to increase its support for open source technology, Microsoft is adding SugarCRM Community Edition as a free download on the Windows Web App Gallery, reports TMCnet.

SugarCRM and Microsoft have had a partnership since 2006, when SugarCRM announced support for Internet Information Services as well as optimisation for Active Directory and SQL Server.

Lauren Cooney, group product manager at Microsoft, called SugarCRM "a great addition to the Windows Web App Gallery”.

A project building an open source version of Microsoft's .NET development framework is trying to attract iPhone developers building business applications, according to The Register.

The Mono Project is recruiting "adventurous" iPhone developers interested in trying Mono for the iPhone and its now feature-completed MonoTouch APIs.

MonoTouch consists of a C# API for building Cocoa applications, and is currently in beta.