Microsoft’s Q4 report to the U.S. SEC includes a rundown of their risk and competition factors, and on that list are both Linux and open source solutions.

Results of Australia’s first large-scale Open Source community census have been released to the public. Produced by Open Source consulting firm Waugh Partners, the Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report gives voice to the business potentials, patterns and concerns of a previously mute sector of the IT industry.

MICROSOFT says it is under attack by open source. The company complained in its annual report that it was facing increasing pressure from open source companies. It claims they are stealing its ideas and benefiting from its intellectual property.

Microsoft’s partners team through its NXT initiative launched a campaign focused on open source ISVs in 2007 in conjunction with the Open Source Business Conference. The campaign is designed to encourage ISVs to explore how best to deliver their solutions to customers in the Microsoft world, recognizing that many high profile open source projects have 30%-50% of their installed base in the Windows world. The Microsoft program works through partners to assist ISVs.

There are number of factors coming together that lead me to believe that open source's moment is right now, today, this year.

In an already tough IT environment, and with Windows 7 garnering buzz, Microsoft(MSFT Quote) may have to sleep with one eye open.One bright spot in an otherwise dampened earnings report showed that Novell's(NOVL Quote) revenue related to its Linux open-source platform -- a chief rival to Windows -- was up 25.5% to $36.6 million from the same quarter a year ago.

This report is an update to the risk report published in Red Hat Magazine in April 2007.

In a report on enterprise open source usage released this week, Gartner research director Laurie Wurster stated in rather strong language that companies could face a big intellectual property issue because they are using the software without understanding the IP implications of the licensing language.

Current Sales Trend Indicates Gadfly Open Source Developers Will Be Nation's Largest Provider of Windows Technology; Microsoft Imperiled CodeWeavers Offers to Buy Microsoft Campus "On Credit" The answer: third quarter, 2018.