The new and flourishing category of netbooks is also becoming a breeding ground for new computer operating systems. The Google-backed, Linux-based open-source Android mobile platform has been moving into netbooks from smartphones, and on Tuesday Intel announced a new beta version of its Linux-based Moblin operating system for netbooks and other mobile devices.

Moblin 2.0 features a new user interface called M-Zone, or My Zone, which includes ready access to IMs, social networks like Facebook or Twitter, and e-mail, and it features its own media player.

Photo: linuxdevices.com

Sun Microsystems Indonesia working with Seamolec and Java Education Network Indonesia (JENI) will be holding the Open Jive national competition.

The competition is themed: “Open source technology for solutions that answer business needs to reduce costs and increase business efficianecy.” This competition will choose one champion that will receive US $ 1000 and will represent Indonesia in the Open Jive regional competition held in Singapore.

Photo: detik.com

In order to socialize IGOS (Indonesia, Go Open Source!) program and introduce the use of open source software in the society, the State Ministry for Research and Technology is holding an IGOS Stroyline competition for a public awareness ad on TV.

The competition is themed “Use Legal Open Source Software Created by the Nation’s Best” is opened for Indonesian citizens age 17-45 (individual or group with a maximum of 5 peopl). The storyline must be original and has not been published yet. The storyline will be made into a 30 seconds ad and the winning script will be used for IGOS campaigning material. Complete information can be seen at http://www.cakrisma.com/igos_adv.htm.

Image: www.igos.web.id

Mozilla Labs is challenging Web designers to help it find a more innovative way to represent browser tabs. The Mozilla Labs Design Challenge: Summer 09 aims to find a better way to create, navigate and manage multiple Web sites within the same browser instance, according to a Web site about the contest.

Mozilla, which came up with the concept of tabs in its Firefox browser as a way to manage browsing multiple Web pages at the same time, said that tabs worked well when people were only using them to look at about 10 Web sites simultaneously. But now, when as many as 20 or more "parallel sessions" on the Web are common, tab technology isn't holding up.

Photo:wisdump.com

So far the President’s record on open source is mixed. The Administration counts as a user of open source, with some of its Web sites running Drupal. The Administration has made moves which seem supportive of open source, both in health care and the military.

On the other hand the Free Software Foundation finds itself on the opposite side of the bar from the Administration in the case of Sony v. Tenenbaum, a music-sharing case. FSF operations manager John Sullivan is deliberately making a “slippery slope” argument that equates the Administration’s support for copyright law, which open source depends on for its own protection, with opposition to open source.

photo: blogz.zdnet.com

Open source has become big business, but it has done so by becoming more like the proprietary-software world it purports to leave behind.

Research from IDC indicates that CIOs allocated up to 24 percent of their budgets to open-source software in 2008, up from 10 percent in 2007. This open-source growth is propelling Red Hat to grow "at two to three times the rate of the broader software industry over a multiyear horizon," according to research from Piper Jaffray. However, none of today’s successful open-source businesses pass the ideologues' unrealistic and counterproductive "100-percent freedom" litmus test.

photo: ostatic.com

On May 7th 2009, SugarCRM, a highly visible open source CRM software company announced that its CEO John Roberts was leaving the business effective immediately. Board member and founder of VA Linux, Larry Augustin is assuming the role of CEO.

MGI Research estimates that SugarCRM's revenues are close to the amount of total capital raised, i.e., $45 million, and it's probable that the company is encountering the same headwinds as others in the SaaS/enterprise software market - lower renewal rates, downward pressure on pricing, and drop in the deferred to realized revenue ratio, a key indicator of soft demand.

Photo: enterpriseblog.net

Intel and Nokia have launched an open source project to develop a mobile telephony stack for possible inclusion in the Moblin and Maemo projects. The oFono stack is based on open source Linux and a high-level D-Bus interconnection API, and targets the development of GSM/UMTS applications.

The oFono technology is licensed under GPLv2, and includes a high-level D-Bus API "for use by telephony applications of any license," says the project. Developed by FreeDesktop.org, D-Bus (Desktop Bus) is an open source, Linux/Unix-based inter-process communication (IPC) technology, which links applications with peripheral services.