Along with the Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting, the Open Source Business Conference was one of the two best conferences I've been to recently (I generally hate conferences). I got my geek on at: FOSDEM and actually enjoyed and learned from the technical sessions. Where OSBC is at the other end of the spectrum with business sessions, so I got my suit on.

Open Tech, an open source partner program organized by Tech Data, has gained a new member. Specifically, KnowledgeTree, an enterprise content management company, has joined Open Tech. The VAR Guy welcomes the news but our resident blogger wonders: Are VARs starting to embrace Open Tech and the rival Open Source Channel Alliance? Here are some clues.

Although the awareness of open source appears low, the lack of Internet-based apps poses an opportunity to bolster open source penetration.

It has been roughly a month since Tech Data launched Open Tech — an open source channel partner initiative. Why is the big distributor interested in the open source market? And how is Open Tech performing so far? I caught up with Tech Data VP Stacy Nethercoat for answers. Here's the interview.

Some people argue that if women really want to be involved in open source (or computing, or corporate management, etc.), they will put up with being stalked, leered at, and physically assaulted at conferences.

For January and February, we chose some of the staples of open source security (GnuPG and Nmap) as the tool of the month. And deservedly so; both have just celebrated their ten-year anniversary in the open source realm, a rare feat for any open source project, much less one founded on security.

"Google has made a donation to assist FSFE's Freedom Task Force with delivering training courses, attending conferences and localising documents [...] «Free Software Foundation Europe has been working to promote and protect Free Software in Europe for many years and the Freedom Task Force is a good example of their long-term approach to supporting the community,» says Jeremy Allison, Member of the Technical Staff - Software Engineer, Google. «I believe that they are doing useful work and I'm proud to see Google supporting their activities.» ..."

More teachers and institutions are now participating with organizations like SchoolForge, the Open Source Education Foundation, and Open Source Schools. These educators are beginning to see that the open source philosophy has the power to transform education in several key ways.

By now, every CIO should be aware of the enterprise potential of Linux and other popular open-source software offerings. But the number and breadth of open-source projects has increased steadily over the years, and organizations can apply these tools to virtually any type of business process.