Theory of competition fails in open source, elshewhere. Markets tend to crystallize around a few dominant players.

Oracle opponent cheers delay in mySQL decision. Florian Mueller, a former mySQL shareholder and strategic advisor, says the delay is good.

Droid could bring Motorola back from dead. The Android-based smartphone could revive the company.

Nokia N900: First look. What the Maemo-based phone/tablet is like from the perspective of a Linux geek.

As GigaOm and this Reuters report note, there is talk that Nokia will show a Maemo phone at next week's Nokia World show in Germany. Maemo, of course, is Nokia's long-standing operating system for its line of Internet Tablets, and is based on Debian GNU/Linux. However, some are interpreting the possibility as yet another sign that Nokia's focus on an open source Symbian OS is wavering.

The Symbian OS has half the global smartphone market, but Reuters quotes Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics as saying: "It looks like Maemo, or at least a Linux derivative of some description, will play a key role for Nokia in high-end (products) over the next year or two." If that's true, I have to question Nokia's overall prospects in the smartphone market.

Intel is getting very serious about mobile phones and platforms, as evidenced by a far-reaching partnership with Nokia, announced today. The partnership comes on the heels of Intel's acquisition of Wind River Systems, which is a big player in the embedded Linux, and embedded mobile technology space. As part of the new partnership, Intel and Nokia announced their intent to collaborate on numerous open source software projects, and Intel will license Nokia's HSPA-capable 3G modem intellectual property for upcoming mobile products. The goal is "to define a new mobile platform beyond today's smartphones, notebooks and netbooks, enabling the development of a variety of innovative hardware, software and mobile Internet services," according to Intel's announcement.