Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines Flourish as "to grow luxuriantly, to thrive, to achieve success, to reach a height of development or influence." It is our belief that Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) has reached this state of flourishing, and can no longer be ignored by any serious IT player. Where do we go from here? What can we expect from FLOSS and its community?

Vyatta today announced it has completed its Series B financing led by Comcast Interactive Capital (CIC). In addition to leading the round, CIC has joined the Vyatta board of directors, where it will assist the company in addressing service provider market opportunities for its open-source networking solutions that include routing, firewall, and VPN functionality as well as extensibility for many other network applications.

An interesting debate has started in The VAR Guy’s home. His old Windows XP PC is running out of gas. He was leaning toward a Mac Mini as a replacement. But now, Dell just complicated things.

I recently penned a piece called ‘Why CIOs Don’t Care About Open Source’ (February 15, 2007) and I’ve been getting responses that have got me thinking. Several dismissed the importance of open source because it was too RTFM (Read the Flaming Manual) and not enough business benefit. In other words, because open source isn’t enough like packaged apps, there isn’t any point for CIOs to consider it.

Are you adept with Virtual Network Computing (VNC)? If not, you'll find that learning even a little about this desktop sharing system pays off big in your daily development or system administration responsibilities.

Millions of websites are plagued by outrageous claims and humorous news articles every April fool’s day. Rather than sifting through the junk looking for legitimate articles, we've decided to join in on the foolery this year too. Most individuals clue in pretty fast as to what's going on, others just take the bait. Yesterday's Microsoft post was a joke!

Big things are going to happen with Linux in the next few years. Especially now that Beryl has changed their licensing to allow its inclusion in Ubuntu and Debian, and Dell offering a pre-installed distribution in the near future. This is just the beginning of the OSS takeover.

The Microsoft thing was all I could come up with in 10 minutes, next year I promise to be a little more creative on April fools. Thank you to everyone sending in emails questioning my mental health. Truthfully, I am launching two more projects soon and may be willing to sell off Linuxlookup under the right circumstances. For those of you with legitimate inquiries regarding business, please feel free to get in touch.

Now back to our regular scheduled programming.

I never thought I'd ever say this, but we're going to work for Microsoft and Linuxlookup.com is up for sale!

Though I've spent the last 11 years as a Linux/Open Source advocate, Microsoft has recently made me an offer too good to refuse. Our agreement forbids any promotion of Open Source Software in any fashion so I'm hoping to pass Linuxlookup on to an individual or organization that can take it to the next level.

As I pack my bags... Linuxlookup is being auctioned on eBay.

Viva la Microsoft!

Here is the Linuxlookup.com weekly wrap-up, some of the hottest stories in the Linux community this week were...

- Dell Refunds Vista/Works With Two Emails

- Mandriva and O3Spaces Announce An Alliance

- Trolltech Qtopia Greenphone and SDK Review Addendum

- Xandros Linux Server to Bundle Scalix 11 Enterprise-Class Collaboration Platform

- Viacom Hates Open Source (and Small Children in the Third World)

- Linux Camp To Sabotage Microsoft-Novell Deal

- Four Google open source tools on Google Code

- Run Linux, lose warranty

- OpenVZ Software Available for Latest Linux Kernel 2.6.20

- Open Source at Microsoft

- ATI Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver 8.35.5

- OpenOffice.org 2.2 Released