At the Linux Collaboration Summit, held last week in San Francisco, an interesting panel discussion took place about Linux' position in the wider operating systems market. Included were Jim Zemlin, Linux Foundation executive director, Ian Murdock, Sun community and developer vice president, and Sam Ramji, Microsoft platform strategy director.

Now that Sam Ramji, Microsoft Corp.'s point man on open source software, is leaving the company at the end of the month, who will possibly fill his shoes and continue to lead Microsoft further into the world of open source collaboration.

Microsoft and Novell are omnipresent on the panels at the Linux Collaboration Summit; Microsoft's MVP Jason Hiner spreads Ubuntu disinformation again, through Tech Republic and ZDNet

The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit started off with a town-hall-style question-and-answer session with about 70 representatives of kernel developers, Linux users, and independent software vendors.

A new open source player is taking on Microsoft’s project management suite, but faces a tough challenge.

A Major threat to free/open operating systems.

The prominent role of Silverlight in the Intel-Microsoft collaboration leads to a new set of questions

The headline act, if you will, was announced this morning for the third annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, and it promises to be an interesting show: the Foundation's Jim Zemlin, Microsoft's Sam Ramji, and Sun's Ian Murdock, each giving their predictions on the future of operating system they represent - and, I expect, the others' as well.

Tough times for the financial services market doesn't mean tough times for all of the software vendors that support them. Open source trading platform software developer Marketcetera, in particular, sees an increasing number of opportunities for its technology.