Rumor of the day: Oracle and Red Hat acquisition/partnership/???

Today’s rumor, which suggests that Oracle may buy Red Hat, or something along those lines, comes from Matt Asay.

The Open Road link dump

Why do I have to do anything when Matt Asay is writing all the good stuff?

I’ll just do a link dump:

WSJ’s Walt Mossberg: “Firefox is the best”
Google embrace OpenOffice? Probably not
Google gets serious about the Mac
WSJ to Microsoft: You need to open source Windows
The eBay “fad” is wearing off
Would we hate Microsoft if it were Apple?
The most important open-source projects…to Google
Does OpenOffice’s speed even matter?
When all else fails, try porn

Matt is a big wheel at open-source company Alfresco, but he isn’t afraid to write about his own company: Try doing this with proprietary software

Here he hints at his almost-working for Microsoft and former position at Novell:
Why I won’t work for Microsoft:

Several years ago while still working for Novell, I considered going to work for Microsoft in Europe. (Had I waited long enough, I could have worked for Microsoft while still at Novell, but that’s another story, albeit one that is paying off well for Novell.) I thought I could help the company figure out open source and navigate the thorny issues that prevent it from embracing open source.

I gave up on that quixotic quest, and in retrospect it was the right decision. Sam Ramji, Bill Hilf, and others are doing a far better job of nudging Microsoft toward open source than I would have. But the bigger reason is that Microsoft has placed an apparently insurmountable hurdle in its path to fully engaging the open-source community, and to my ability to fully support its embrace of open source:

Patents

A few more links:

The Mac’s allure for open-source developers
Twitter is the Wonderbread of intellectual nutrition