Open source 'not a fad'

Mark Driver, one of the organisers of Gartner's Open Source Summit, capped his introductory presentation by telling IT managers that ignoring open source is no longer an option, says Info World.

He called open source "the biggest change in corporate IT since distributed computing... Open source is not a niche, not a fad." And on the competitive front, "competing against open source is tilting at windmills".

These were strong words, but backed up by good research and observations. By 2011, Gartner predicts at least 80% of all commercial software solutions will include substantive open source.

In what may be the first action of its kind in the US, the Software Freedom Law Centre has filed a lawsuit to enforce an open source licence, reports Infoworld.

The SFLC filed the suit on Wednesday in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, against Monsoon Multimedia, on behalf of the developers of BusyBox, Erik Andersen and Rob Landley.

The suit charges Monsoon with using BusyBox under the GNU General Public License version 2, but failing to publish its source code. Under the terms of the licence, distributors of software that use the licensed software must make their source code available. Failing to do so is considered copyright infringement.

Saving power has become a mainstream concern in the enterprise and at home, as IT users aim to cut costs and do their part to help save the planet, says Internet News.

There are a lot of different ways that technology users can reduce their power, and chip maker Intel is putting a number of them under one umbrella, called Less Watts. The only caveat, though, is that it's targeted specifically at Linux users.

"What's interesting about this project is that it's an umbrella project covering a broader range of things already in existence," Dirk Hohndel, chief Linux and open source technologist, told InternetNews.com. "It's an open source project and we want to create a community that shares tips, helps each other and creates a focal point around saving power."