In recent weeks I have banged on about Open Source, expending two articles on Firefox alone. Open Source applications make their code available to everyone. Disagreements and rabid balkanisation within the Open Source community aside, for our purposes the term might as well refer to free software whose licence allows you to share the source code, alter it, use it, do with it what you will.

RMS: «...Their stated definition for the term “open source” is somewhat broader than free software, and thus includes my work. But describing the GNU GPL as an “open source license,” as Microsoft did, is more than half misleading. The GNU GPL embodies the firm philosophy of the free software movement; it doesn't come from the open source movement.

t seems we’ve arrived upon Microsoft open source. In the last couple of years, whenever there was discussion of Microsoft’s open source projects and efforts such as CodePlex or Port25, there was typically the standard open source response: it’s not OSI-approved; it’s not real open source.

Latest examples of Microsoft's strategy, wherein it sends out affiliates to pretend to be FOSS people and then promote software patent deals, separation between Open Source and Free software, departure from the GPL, promotion of "open" core (proprietary) as "Open Source", and demotion of free/libre platforms like GNU/Linux along with free suites/formats like ODF

Companies which are faking/misusing “Open Source” are named and shamed, but Microsoft, which violated the GPL several times last year and casts “Open Source” as “Open APIs”, gets a free ride

So you've got to cut costs, but you're not a manager. You're a software developer, or a power user, or just someone who needs to keep the bottom line healthy enough to support your salary. These are ideal situations for introducing open source software solutions into your environment.

There are more and more companies adopting open source solutions in favor of proprietary software due to the cost savings they can reap, although perhaps not enough. Today, I noticed this release from IBM about Italian food company Gruppo Amadori rolling out Red Hat Enterprise Linux with desktops running IBM software, much of which is free, and some of which has open source roots.

Here's a fascinating document coming from Microsoft – actually a job advertisement for the post of Senior Marketing Manager – Open Source Community. One of his jobs: to move free and open source away from free and open source GNU/Linux and to the closed and propriatery Windows.

Once the traditional anti-open source poster child, Microsoft is slowly seeing this aura eroding replaced as a direct consequence of the rise of new, more pressing, rivals such as Google and Apple.