OStatic

In a post yesterday, I made the point that proprietary software applications are benefitting greatly from building on top of open source components. This is a beneficial trend that is largely missed by those who see open source as threatening to collapse proprietary software pricing models. In the blogosphere today, there is much hubbub over rumors that Google is about to buy Twitter. Without a doubt, Twitter has become a social phenomenon (many celebrities use it, in addition to nearly everyone else), and the company has already been offered hundreds of millions of dollars for an acquisition before. But did you know that Twitter is based largely on open source components?

GigaOm has an interesting item up on the keynote speech that Robert Dotson, chief executive of T-Mobile USA, gave this week at CTIA in Las Vegas. An estimated 1.5 million G1 Android-based smartphones have been ordered, and Dotson provided a lot of notable statistics about the usage patterns people are showing for the phone and Android. I've been using the G1, and my usage lines up with some of Dotson's stats.

We've reported on successful efforts to run the Android OS on netbooks and e-ink devices, and on how Android may ultimately be more successful on these platforms than on phones. Among other developments on this front, Qualcomm is running Android on its Snapdragon chipset designed for netbooks and mobile Internet devices. (Another Qualcomm chip powers the G1 Android phone.) Now, in a post called One Step Closer to the Google Linux Desktop, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is analyzing reports that Hewlett-Packard, ASUS, and other computer makers are in talks with Google about putting Android on netbooks.