OStatic

Missing: Dell Ubuntu desktop PCs. The VAR Guy explores whether Dell has stopped selling Ubuntu desktop computers.

Open source Hive: Large-scale, distributed data processing made easy. Hive is a data analysis and query front end for Hadoop that makes Hadoop data files look like SQL tables.

Microsoft opened Linux-driver code after violating GPL. Did it act simply to head off any potentially embarrassing legal disputes over violations?

SpringSource and MindTouch seek to redefine the application server. Spurred by economic pressures on IT departments, new breeds of app servers are taking shape.

The tech jobs that the cloud will eliminate. IT pros face new competition for their jobs from cloud services. Which jobs go, and which become more valuable?

Hadoop and MapReduce are cheap and scalable for clustered queries, but they're slower than relational databases. Yale researchers have an improvement.

The Ubuntu Linux app store: fact or fiction? The emerging app store, which offers Ubuntu Linux and Debian applications, wasn?t built by Canonical.

Linux slips into Microsoft's warm, deadly embrace. How Microsoft will use the GPL to mount a serious backdoor assault on the core of the Linux platform.

Is Microsoft's GPL2 support really a big deal? It's recently released code is only for Linux Virtual Machines on Windows, not physical Linux servers and Linux desktops.

Red Hat is wrong to insist Microsoft disavow litigation. Did IBM, HP, Oracle, or even Red Hat ever declare that they will never, ever sue open source developers over patent infringements?

Palm's Linux secret makes the Pre. Palm Pre is no thriller as a smartphone, but the SDK reveals the most open mobile platform on the market.

Microsoft Watch's Joe Wilcox, in solemn observance of Friday the 13th, compiled a list of Microsoft's ten most unlucky breaks. The strokes of misfortune chosen were weighted according to heinousness (with #10 being least signficant, and #1 the most).

Checking in at #7 is the development of the Linux kernel. Putting aside Microsoft's whole Schrodinger's cat sort of approach to Linux over the years (Linux is not a threat. Linux is a threat), it is interesting Wilcox (and the analysts who helped him narrow down the list) focused on the kernel as the bad break.

Check in with Chris DiBona, Google's open source chief, on how committed Google is to OSS, and more.....

Google announces OpenSocial 0.8.....

Bill Gates discussed Windows 7 at the D conference. It has a multi-touch interface--video and photos found here.....

Ruby on Rails upgrade may arrive this weekend.....

Eighteen universities say they are turning to Groundwork Open Source's network management software.....

Funambol, maker of open source messaging software, has a new version of its BlackBerry push e-mail and PIM sync app.....