OStatic

For so many years, Taiwan-based Acer was an under-the-radar computer manufacturer. Although it has been the number three player, behind Hewlett-Packard and Dell, for a long time, even the company's previous business strategy tended to keep it anonymous. Acer used to make computers that other companies would put their brands on. It was better known overseas than in the United States.

All that is changing now--big time--and how both Dell and Acer approach open source is an important component of the competition between the two companies. As The New York Times reports, Acer now stands a good chance of surpassing Dell as the number two computer manufacturer. Among other things, Acer made shrewd moves in the laptop arena, particularly when it comes to netbooks.

Digg, Dug, Buried: How Linux news disappears. Stories can be buried on sites such as Digg by abusive users with an axe to grind.

Will Novell, Dell turn to open-source M&A to grow? Novell has expressed interest in acquisitions, and Dell may have its eyes on the open source storage market.

Is the world now an open source society? Do open source and the Internet values on which it is based have a political dimension?

Getting the most out of OpenOffice.org Writer. It is, without a doubt, the most frequently used application in the OpenOffice.org suite.

While we've all been speculating about whether Dell is working on Android netbooks, the computer hardware and software vendor was busy bundling open source applications to offer to small- and medium-sized business (SMB) customers looking for low cost alternatives to commercial software. The pre-configured SMB-in-a-box software is only available in the U.S. for now, but Dell expects to lauch a similar offering in Asia by the end of 2009.