There are two good articles in today's business section of the NY Times that you should check out. One is about open source software and the other is about Huawei Technologies. The former is focused on the pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle and the issue the European Union has, because Sun previously acquired MySQL, an open source alternative to costly Oracle offerings. Would Oracle stop or slow down MySQL software development to benefit its own highly profitable software? That is the question. The article also discusses some acquisitions of open source software developers by much larger established companies. Makes one wonder if Digium is a potential acquisition candidate by someone who does not want to be weighed down by an installed base of proprietary hardware.The Huawei story focuses on its recent bid win for Norway's Telenor mobile network infrastructure upgrade, but should be read as a precautionary warning about how the Chinese telecommunications system supplier is making strong headway on a global basis. Huawei is likely the greatest threat to Cisco's grip on the communications network market, and if rumors (though strongly denited) about the Chinese company's strong ties to its domestic government and military are true Cisco should have a lot to worry about.
