The concept of open source software seems so firmly entrenched in higher education that it comes as almost a shock to realize there's actually a debate over it.

Yesterday I speculated that the open source model in the software world is going to undermine the basic delivery system for higher education in the United States (and perhaps elsewhere). Today I want to consider what, exactly, a transformed system of education might look like.

To be honest, for a couple of years now I have been pretty skeptical about the future of Free and Open Source software in Finnish schools and education sector in general. In Finland we have a lot of open source expertise and know-how. We have developers. I also assume that majority of the (liberally) higher educated people in Finland, at least know what is "Open Source" and "Linux".

A new survey of companies and individuals supplying Open Source solutions and services claims to show that Open Source IT professionals make more money than their proprietary IT counterparts because they're more highly skilled.

Reader-submitted nominations were at the heart of the annual "Linux and Enterprise Open Source Readers' Choice awards," revealed at the recent Enterprise Open Source Conference & Expo 2007 in New York. Notable winners include Ubuntu (Linux distribution), Sendmail (email server), and Evolution (productivity tool), conference organizer SYS-CON Media announced this week.

Are open source developers on the ball about delivering alternatives to cutting-edge proprietary products and services, or do they lag the proprietary innovators? That topic came up at this week's OSCON conference in Portland, and there is a case to be made for the idea that open source developers don't deliver key products in key categories fast enough.

IBM made a slew of announcements and predictions on open source topics at this week's LinuxWorld conference, but one of the least talked about and written about announcements was this one (Matt Asay did single it out). IBM released its HPC Open Software Stack as open source, aiming at cheaper-to-deploy, simpler supercomputers.

One Course Source has announced its first annual open source conference, set for Oct. 3-4 in San Diego, Calif. The organization says the "One Course Source - Open Source Conference" (OCS-OSC) aims to "[address] the growing demand for alternative technology solutions that cost-effectively support and sustain the corporate IT environment."

In recent months, Zimbra deployments have more than doubled in higher education. For Exchange and Lotus Domino/Notes VARs serving higher education, it might be time to give Zimbra a look.