OStatic

As some OStatic readers have likely already heard, Microsoft is taking TomTom, a manufacturer of in-car navigation devices, to court for patent infringement. This is especially disturbing to those in the open source world for at least two reasons -- Microsoft's previous claims that Linux violates over two hundred patents it currently holds, and three of the claims against TomTom deal with TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel in its products.

Techdirt's Mike Masnick presents some good analysis of the story, including links to the patents in question and those with particularly tenuous claims (in terms of infringement and patentability, in a few instances). While this is worrisome to those who use Linux, and certainly causing TomTom executives to lose sleep, I can't help but wonder, really, what this positioning actually means. Why is this coming up now? If hundreds of Microsoft patents are being violated, why go after a company infringing on eight (with three relating directly to Linux)? And why TomTom?

Today, Funambol, a provider of open source push and mobile sync software, officially introduced the next generation of its MobileWe platform. Funambol's v8 MobileWe software looks a bit different from its predecessors, and with good reason. This release sports a new AJAX web portal and integrates some very visual features.

The new portal was designed to better facilitate syncing PIM (contact and calendar) data, email and multimedia files between mobile devices, the internet, and desktop computers. Those who are familiar with Funambol's software likely picked up on the other new feature from that last sentence: The v8 MobileWe software supports image syncing between devices.

As more applications move to the cloud, it's not surprising that developers are spending a lot of time working on ways to provide mobile access to the cloud. To create applications and services for handheld devices like the iPhone and Android-based G1, they use tools like Volantis' Open Source Mobility Server, a java-based development and runtime platform.

Volantis Systems released version 5.1 of GPLv3-licensed Volantis Mobility Server (VMS) Community Edition this week. It has connectors that integrate with many popular Web sites including Picasa, Flickr, and Google Docs, with more expected to be added in future releases. The new version is optimized for the iPhone and also includes tools to create mash-up mobile applications. When looking at the future of VMS, Dave Roberts, Manager, Business Development, says thanks to the open source community, the sky's the limit.