What does Software as a Service (SaaS) have to do with Open Source? Not much, you might think. Or maybe you've noticed that the FSF extended the spanking new GPL3 to the Affero Licence--to deal with SaaS providers? It does not help Open Source Software makers to make more money, so who cares? Well, OSS makers should care, as SaaS may finally give them a business model that may finally bring them some money.

VMware today inked a quartet of software deals with server giants Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Fujitsu Siemens. The agreements will infuriate Microsoft which is struggling to get its own virtualisation offering onto the market.

This month’s cover story for VAR Business touts the Attack of the Alternatives. The premise is certain companies are gaining or having success in the shadows of the market leaders because they are offering a greater value then the market giants:

OpenProj 1.0 was recently released by Projity, which offers a related commercial product called Project-On-Demand. OpenProj is written in Java and licensed under CPAL 1.0, and versions for Windows, Mac OS/X, and Linux can be downloaded from SourceForge.net.

Open-Xchange Inc., the market-leading independent open source alternative to Microsoft Exchange, today announced a special program for Zimbra customers concerns about their investment in light of the pending Microsoft/Yahoo deal.

It will come as no surprise to readers of this blog that the old proprietary software companies are finally seeing the light and beginning – some faster, some slower – to open up. Adobe is one such company, and to consolidate its moves it has set up a new site, called simply Adobe Open Source

No move by Microsoft to share information with its competitors will ever be taken at face value, and certainly yesterday's new Interoperability Principle will come under very close scrutiny. Is this the opening of the floodgates the EC has been demanding?