Once upon a time, using open-source servers and applications for business was frowned upon in many circles. Today, you’d be hard pressed to find any sizeable infrastructure that doesn’t leverage open-source code in some form or another, be it a few MySQL databases, Apache on the Web servers, or a pile of Perl, PHP, Ruby, or Python applications holding things together.

Once upon a time, using open-source servers and applications for business was frowned upon in many circles. Today, you'd be hard pressed to find any sizeable infrastructure that doesn't leverage open-source code in some form or another, be it a few MySQL databases, Apache on the Web servers, or a pile of Perl, PHP, Ruby, or Python applications holding things together.

Recently, Novell Inc. has been the beneficiary of generally good news. First, Microsoft gave Novell the nod to write open source extensions to its new System Center, which signals Microsoft’s move toward greater interoperability. This will benefit all open source vendors, but Novell in particular, because these extensions are built on Novell’s ZENworks management software.

It seemed like such a great idea. Linux is moving from edge and departmental servers to the data center, so why not offer Linux data center automation, complete with virtualization Linux lifecycle management? Well, maybe it's still a great business idea, but Levanta wasn't able to make a go of it.

Advocates are concerned SaaS providers will transform but not contribute their innovations back to the community.

Flock, a Firefox-based Web browser that plays up social networking online, has raised $15 million in a fourth round of funding led by Fidelity Ventures. The company's previous investors, Bessemer Venture Partners, Catamount Ventures, and Shasta Ventures, also participated in the round.

We have previously voiced concern about the pipeline for VC funding based on the fact that while the first quarter of 2008 was the most successful quarter in history in terms of open source vendors raising venture capital funding, the percentage of disclosed Seed and Series A funding hit an all time low in the quarter.

Linux's market value in China is growing, according to CCID Consulting, owing to growing approval from government, finance, telecoms and post services. Linux is also making inroads to the desktop in China, mostly from smaller PC manufacturers. In addition, mobile devices are a widening market for Linux.