Open source now about flexibility

Perhaps it's a sign of an upward shift in the economy, or perhaps it was simply an inevitable conclusion, but open source adoption is increasingly a matter of flexibility and innovation, not price, says CNET News.

While some early adopters have long advocated open source as a means to more flexible IT, it's only now that the general marketplace is awaking to the possibilities.

It's not surprising that enterprise IT would be looking to lighten its software cost burden, as proprietary software vendors derive an ever-growing chunk of their revenue from software maintenance fees, a "boondoggle" for vendors, according to CMS Watch, which fattens vendor coffers while providing minimal value to customers.

When we look at relationships and the course history takes, the past seems like an illusion. It was just the other day that Microsoft and open source were bitter enemies, writes the Hindustan Times.

In 2001, Microsoft had said "Linux is cancer" and a few years later Microsoft decided to apply balm to heal the cancer and mend its relationship with Linux through its open source initiatives.

Its 2009 now and Microsoft, the once closely guarded organisation, is stripping its soul, literally, to woo open source by releasing 20 000 lines of Linux code to the Linux kernel community in the name of interoperability, something not even Bill Gates could imagine 10 years ago!

Mozilla Labs has started a new project, called TestSwarm for JavaScript testing, according to Softpedia.

Developed under the supervision of John Resig, the creator of the Query JavaScript library supervision, this is still in Alpha development, but confirmed by Resig to be officially released in the near future.

TestSwarm runs different tests on user's browsers and operating systems, currently only for some of the most used open-source platforms like jQuery, Dojo, YUI, MooTools, and Prototype.