OStatic

Moblin version 2.0 video - finally, a real mobile UI for netbooks. Check out the video here for a look at Intel's Moblin OS, optimized for Atom chips.

If Oracle commits to Solaris, will IBM buy Red Hat? Oracle may offer customers attractive terms to stay on Solaris, affecting migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Can open source refuse to do business? If an open source developer doesn't like someone, can he or she obstruct usage of applications?

Internet.com launches online freelance marketplace. It's free to join, post projects, bid on projects, and seek freelance gigs.

Biomedical informatics researchers at IBM and the Mayo Clinic launch a new open source consortium. It will focus on large-scale data aggregation, and ease mining of medical records.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says he doesn't get the point of Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems. After expressing surprise and saying he doesn't understand the deal on Monday, he's now more specific: I have no idea why a software company would buy a hardware company, Reuters reports him saying while speaking to the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt. We don't want to buy any hardware companies.

Isn't it a bit reductionist to call Sun a hardware company? Sun has a huge portfolio of compelling software, not the least of which is MySQL. On that front, IBM is also revealing how it will counter Oracle and MySQL in the database wars.

According to the New York Times and Bloomberg, IBM's purchase of Sun Microsystems is imminent. The official announcement and terms of the acquisition will most likely be made public on Monday, but a late in the day announcement hasn't been ruled out. It's estimated that the purchase will cost IBM nearly $7 billion.

There's been much speculation and discussion both here at OStatic and elsewhere about what this means for Sun and its open source projects.

In case you were wondering, Red Hat--fresh off a rosy earnings report that was interpreted by analysts as a welcoming present for new CEO Jim Whitehurst--won't deliver a desktop product for consumers anytime soon. In a news post at the company's site, team members write: We have no plans to create a traditional desktop product for the consumer market in the foreseeable future.

While there has been much speculation that Red Hat might target the consumer desktop, I'm not surprised by this news. Why isn't the company delivering such a product? Because it doesn't need to.