Open source, features to drive smartphone market. In-Stat sees 412 million smartphones by 2014, with open source playing a big role.

PortableApps adds non-open source apps, sort of. Freeware makes its way into the suite, which won four of SourceForge's recent Community Choice awards.

Can open source software save democracy? Mitch Kapor delivers open source voting system software.

Will OpenSolaris survive Oracle? With Oracle preparing to take over Sun, we should consider the fate of the OS.

As you’re probably well aware, OSCON is one of the must-attend open source conferences held each year, and last week, the 11th annual OSCON was held in San Jose, California. Although some felt that OSCON didn’t quite make the splash in its new San Jose home that was expected, the decidedly geeky conference put on by tech publisher O’Reilly Media included many sessions and exhibitors of interest. Here are a few notable examples, in a guest column from SourceForge advisory board member Mark R. Hinkle.

PortableApps has issued a new beta version of its Platform 2.0 release, downloadable here. If you’re unfamiliar with PortableApps, I covered it previously here, and it swept the SoureForge Community Choice Awards for open source software last night, winning four awards, including Best Project, and Most Likely to Change the Way You Do Everything. It’s a suite of truly excellent, pre-selected, open source applications that you can stick on a USB flash drive. That enables you to have your applications--with your pre-set preferences--available to run on any computer, anytime.

It’s especially popular as a way to store many useful applications on a pocketable drive, but many netbook owners who don't want to run bloated applications use the small-footprint apps in the PortableApps suite. The open source applications that you get are top-notch, and the new upgrade to the suite includes many meaningful enhancements.