It's about time that United States elite academic institutions finally got around to not only using open-source software, but also teaching it. In the April 2008 edition of Harvard Business Review, Harvard gives its MBA students a taste of the decision facing every company that leverages technology as part of its business (namely, everyone) Should I embrace or fight open source?

I was reading through a Harvard Business Review article and I came across a distinction made by a Harvard professor which essentially says [in my own words] … “people don’t want a car, they just want to get from here to there”

For those waiting for a grand cataclysmic battle between Gog (Linux) and Magog (Windows), with one supreme victor, don't hold your breath, suggests a new study by Harvard Business School.

Deishin Lee of Harvard Business School, and Professor Haim Mendelson of Stanford's Graduate School of Business, eloquently lay out a strategy in a recent paper for squashing open source competition. Ironically, it's also a road map for open source companies to use to defeat their entrenched and expensive rivals.

Business users of open source software should review their Open Source licensing agreements, audit their use of Open Source and create formal policies for managing source code, especially mixed-source code.

The open source legal profession has established the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review (IFOSSLR) to discuss topics including copyrights, licensing, software patents, open standards, case law and statutes in the open source arena. The IFOSSLR now appears in its second issue.

While gathering support contract pricing information for my Ubuntu 8.04 review, I noticed a somewhat surprising item listed among the benefits of paying Canonical for a Linux distribution the company gives away for free: Protect your business against IP infringement claims

"Our annual meeting has now officially morphed into the LibrePlanet event. The date is set. March 21st and 22nd -- that's right, two whole days! LibrePlanet will be at the Harvard Science Center, right in Harvard Square on the MBTA's red line.

A company's decision to contribute to open source projects is usually business-driven. This article offers a review of the top reasons that can influence your company to contribute source code to open source or to start new open source projects.