I’ve talked in the past about a number of “open source” business models. There’s the MySQL “dual license” model, where all the software is available under an open license but a proprietary license can be purchased.

I want to tell you some kind of so-called success story of one company (where I work nowadays): company that chose freedom path as a base for software development. There are many “theoretical” talks about how free software can be used commercially, that it can greatly stimulate business activity and so on. There are very few real life examples of that.

Dana Blankenhorn makes some good points in a post from today titled Open Source in a Time of Recession. One of the better points is that, despite the incredible turmoil in global markets and economies, we actually haven't met the official definition of a recession yet here in the U.S., which would be two consecutive quarters without economic growth.

Everyone knows patent trolls are constantly hard at work, thanks to the potentially deep and tasty pockets of companies like Red Hat, which has continued to prove not only the success of the open source development model, but that you can build a stellar business based on that model.

Red Hat and Georgia Tech have published a study that measures open source activity around the world. The Open Source Index (OSI) is accompanied by an interactive map (pictured) that shows the relative rankings for 75 countries based on their open source software (OSS) activity.

Pulse is a build server that can monitor your source repository and trigger a build and test cycle every time somebody does a commit. With Pulse you will always know if the most recent sources in your revision control system compile and if they pass your unit and system tests.

In a speech before the World Economic Forum in Switzerland this week, mega-billionaire Bill Gates is calling for a “creative capitalism” in which businesses build and target products for poorer nations.

With the financial meltdown eroding IT budgets, large investment banks, hedge funds and other financial institutions have been forced to rethink their attitudes toward open source technology.

Marrying technology, innovation and this curious internet thing of giving stuff away for free, consultant and Cong-base Englishman, Lloyd Hardy, is hoping to kick start an online learning revolution. Hardy proposes to deliver university courses for free over the internet using an “open source” model.