Open source funding: the complete picture

VCs invested $475.2m in Linux and open source-related vendors in 2006, up 61.6% from $294.0m in 2005. The total amount raised since 2000: $1.89bn.

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European spend on open source software hits €22bn

The notional value of Europe’s investment in free/libre or open source software today is €22bn, representing 20.5pc of the region’s total software investment, a senior UN researcher will tell an intelligence briefing on open source in Dublin later this week.

Rishab Ghosh, a senior researcher at the UN University in Maastricht, will tell the Open Ireland conference in Dublin that the spend in the US on free/libre or open source software (FLOSS) stands at €36bn and accounts for 20pc of software spend in the US.

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Big Debian Linux Payday For HP

HP is making $25 million by supporting the free Debian GNU/Linux distribution in what may ultimately turn out to be a challenge to commercial distributions from Novell and Red Hat.

HP announced in August 2005 it would be offering support services for Debian, which has been one of the most popular and widest deployed community-based Linux distributions since its inception.GNU/Linux.

In fiscal 2006, $25 million in hardware sales in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) were directly related to HP's Debian support.

"I was pretty shocked when I found out about this," Jeffrey Wade, worldwide marketing manager of open source and Linux at HP, told internetnews.com.

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South African Government Adopts Open Source Policy

South Africa announced Thursday its plan to use open source software on government-run computer systems. Officials said the strategy will lower costs an enhance local IT skills. The use of open source solutions has been on the rise within government, particularly within governments outside of the United States, said Gordon Haff, principal IT advisor and analyst for Illuminata.

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National Open Centre (NOC) holds official launch in Houses of Parliament

The National Open Centre (NOC) holds its official launch, hosted by John Hemming MP, in the Houses of Parliament on the 26th February 2007. Nearly 100 individuals from the ICT industry: small business, multi-nationals, proprietary and the open source community, public sector, education and the media have accepted the invitation to this landmark launch.

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Carnegie Mellon Folds Open Source Into New Degree Offering

Carnegie Mellon West's Software Management program is built on the university's existing software engineering curriculum, the school explained, but adds a business and organizational component that "breaks with tradition by giving students the broader perspective needed to collaborate with and lead the global, distributed teams that are defining next-generation software".

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A key component of those next-generation organizations will be open source.

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SugarCRM opens EU centre in Dublin

SugarCRM, a fast-growth US software company, is to create an initial 10 new jobs by the end of 2007 at its new European headquarters in Dublin.

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IDC: Linux Ecosystem Worth $40 Billion by 2010

At the Linuxworld Open Solutions Summit, which kicked off today in New York, IDC analysts detailed where they see the Linux ecosystem today and where it is headed by 2010.

For 2006, Al Gillen, research vice president of system software at IDC, told an early morning audience that the research firm has pegged the Linux ecosystem that includes servers and software to be worth $18 billion. By 2010, Gillen said, the market will be worth $40 billion.

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Yale on $0 a Day

Getting into college may be tougher than it used to be. But top schools are offering a growing number of courses free online.

Following the lead of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other highly competitive schools, more institutions are posting online everything from lecture notes to sample tests, and even making audio and video files of actual lectures publicly available. The sites attract anywhere from thousands to more than one million unique visitors each month.

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Venture capitalists bet big on open source companies - LinuxWorld

Investors showered over $21 million collectively on two open source start-ups last week: Fonality, an Asterisk IP PBX vendor, and GroundWork Open Source, a network management firm. Venture capitalists are betting these companies will challenge larger vendors such as Avaya or Nortel in telephony, or HP or IBM in network management, with lower-cost, open source-based products.

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Emerging Markets Embracing Open Source

Developers in emerging market countries are substantially increasing implementation of Open Source code in their applications, according to Evans Data Corporation’s just released 2007 Emerging Markets Development Survey. In this survey that covers developers in regions such as Brazil, Russia/Eastern Europe, India and China, 69% of respondents said they are currently using OSS, which is up from 59% six months ago. The increased adoption rate correlates to the sharp adoption of Eclipse in countries like India and Brazil, as well as a rise in Linux development in many of the emerging markets.

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French students to get open-source software on USB key

French authorities will give out 175,000 USB memory sticks loaded with open-source software to Parisian high school students at the start of the next school year.

The sticks will give the students, ages 15 and 16, the freedom to access their e-mail, browser bookmarks and other documents on computers at school, home, a friend's house or in an Internet cafe -- but at a much lower cost than providing notebook computers for all, a spokesman for the Greater Paris Regional Council said Friday.

It's a way to reduce the digital divide, said spokesman Jean-Baptiste Roger.

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Free wireless for Dublin

Dubliners can look forward to free wireless internet access anywhere in the capital if Dublin City Council goes ahead with plans to launch a WiFi internet service.

Such a service would allow everyone from commuters on buses to tourists in city parks to access the web from wireless devices.

The council has tendered for consultants to offer advice regarding regulatory, technological and financial issues surrounding the deployment of a citywide wireless broadband-access service.

"Many European and US cities have set up citywide WiFi networks which are independent of the private sector," said Brian Curtis, Dublin City Council's IT manager. "We have a tender out for advisers to give independent advice on a number of issues around citywide WiFi access."

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