Even though the economy is rough all over, this really is one of the best times to be working in an open source company. There are advantages for those running the business, and for those using its services. Perhaps the only better arrangement would be along the lines of what Likewise Software has put together -- an open source company developing and offering support services for software that integrates and secures mixed network environments.

There are a lot of mixed networks out in the wild, of course. This is why Likewise has successfully secured a $10 million Series C round of funding, which the company plans to use to pursue growth in new markets and fund the development of its product line.

For the past few weeks, off and on, I've heard some low-level, excited buzzing about iFolder. What is it? Think of it as an open source Dropbox service that lives on your servers under your jurisdiction, with a few added perks.

iFolder isn't new, per se, but it hasn't seen an updated source code release since 2007. Late last week, Novell, which sponsors the iFolder project, announced that iFolder 3.7.2 client and server packages -- as well as source code -- were available for download. The new release runs on Mac, Windows (including Vista) and Linux 32- and 64- bit environments. The push is now on to keep iFolder a very community-driven initiative.

There are many reasons to love the open source approach. The events chronicled in an article on NetworkWorld surrounding an exploit affecting Firefox outlines, quite elegantly, how open code outwardly appears risky, and -- well, wide open -- and how that same quality generates faster fixes and stronger applications.

A security researcher discovered that Firefox is vulnerable to remote memory corruption, enabling attackers to execute malicious (or at least very much unauthorized) code within the context of the browser. While security researchers spend countless hours searching out bugs and vulnerabilities, it's not usually the case that the offending attack finds its way into the public eye. Yesterday, however, this little exploit was published on several security sites. The vulnerability affects Firefox versions 3.0 through 3.0.7, on all platforms. In less than 24 hours, developers issued a patch for the vulnerability, to be included in next week's 3.0.8 release.