I used to think I was in control of what I blog and what I Twitter. Recently I've been disabused of this notion, particularly with regard to what I Twitter. In a postmodern, Jacques Derrida sense, the reader has come to mean more than the author. Or to think that she does. This fact was brought home...

One of the most disruptive aspects of the Internet is that it makes all content cheap and disposable. Though various industries--from music to software--have resisted the Web's commodity urge, none have managed to escape it. Whether music, journalism, or software, the Internet makes distribution and...

Microsoft takes a lot of grief for its stance on Linux, while IBM gets a lot of credit. Extending from that, the industry tends to view IBM as a paragon of open-source virtue while Microsoft plays the role of villain. It struck me today, however, that these roles are, to a certain degree, accidents ...

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/Zimbra_Tops_Google_s_Gmail_with_40_million_Paid_Mailboxes'; It's impressive to be able to give away 31.2 million free Gmail accounts, as Google has. It's even more impressive to get customers to pay for 40 million mailboxes, as Zimbra reported today, representin...

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/Zimbra_Tops_Google_s_Gmail_with_40_million_Paid_Mailboxes'; It's impressive to be able to give away 31.2 million free Gmail accounts, as Google has. It's even more impressive to get customers to pay for 40 million mailboxes, as Zimbra reported today, representin...

There are lots of reasons to believe that Microsoft isn't going after open source with its TomTom patent infringement suit and, as Rob Enderle points out, TomTom can hardly afford to defend itself, anyway: TomTom, which hasn't exactly been an open source poster child, has a problem....Tom Tom really...

Reading through the latest copy of BusinessWeek last night, I particularly enjoyed this comment from Jack and Suzy Welch on political "flip-flopping," otherwise known as "changing one's mind in the face of new information": It's hard to know exactly when flip-flopping first became a dirty word in th...

As the developed economies crater, many vendors are looking beyond the borders of North America and Western Europe to grow into Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. For open-source companies, in particular, Latin America shows a great deal of promise, as countries like Brazil and Argenti...

Zack Urlocker of MySQL fame was at the Stanford Accel Symposium earlier this week and, along with some other open-source heavyweights, participated on a panel that attempted to cull some lessons learned in building open-source businesses. If you didn't get to attend the event, don't panic. Urlocker ...

Last week, Microsoft promoted Horacio Gutierrez, formerly vice president of intellectual property, to corporate vice president. This week, Gutierrez polished his new business cards and sent them TomTom's way, with a patent infringement lawsuit. As CNET News' Ina Fried reports, Microsoft on Wednesday...