While the Googlers want to talk today about improvements to GMail for mobile, there remains a serious concern for you to discuss this weekend.

Is Google really good at being part of an open source community?

There are three types of mobile source projects:

1. One-company projects.
2. Multiple-company projects.
3. Community projects, which may or may not have a commercial arm.

Can Google build open source communities | Open Source | ZDNet.com

Last week, I spent a lot of time with the folks from Symbian, the mobile operating system that Nokia (NYSE: NOK) paid $410 million for, only to turn around and donate the assets to an open-source foundation. What I wanted to know was how the employees—who were once programmed to make profits and sell licenses—were adapting to a life as a non-profit, which gave away code and incorporated the intellectual property of others? From the outside, it appears the transition is going well. Over the past few months, the Foundation’s openness has been demonstrated through its blog, which informs people of everything from the move into new offices to the latest software launch. The vocabulary is very deliberate, using words such as “community,” “movement,” and “heart” whenever possible. Developers and outsiders are encouraged to give their opinions, and frequently, Symbian responds with an explanation, even when criticized (I’ll get to that later).

Symbian has no simple task in front of it. This may be the largest open-source endeavor that any one entity has ever attempted. As Nokia executives have said before, it brings together millions of lines of code that companies have invested billions of dollars to create. But the radical decision to open-source the software clearly demonstrates the mounting competition from new entrants, such as Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), the LiMo Foundation, Google’s Android operating system and even incumbent platforms such as Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. In some ways, Symbian had no choice.

The Making Of Open Source: Checking In On The Symbian ‘Movement’ | mocoNews

It is meant to illustrate the costs of “upgrading” from a proprietary to a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) solution in your IT shop.

The open source sea change and the Taylor graph | Open Source | ZDNet.com

Well, that hasn’t happened. In fact it seems as if the two operating systems are determined to coexist in the IT world.

With that in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to list the ways in which Microsoft could help Linux solidify itself as a viable enterprise and end user solution.

10 ways Microsoft could help Linux – Program – Linux – Builder AU

Microsoft is drawing mixed reactions to the release last week of the source code for its ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC). The tooling was released under the Open Source Initiative (OSI)-recognized Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL).

The move came just two weeks after the release of ASP.NET MVC, Microsoft’s design pattern for test-driven development of enterprise-scale Web applications. It also comes as Microsoft last week continued to emphasize its open source initiatives.

Release of ASP.NET MVC Under Open Source License Draws Mixed Reviews | Redmond Developer News

We’re going old school — like, long-before-your-editor-was-born school — to set the mood for this one. Microsoft’s been talking open source again, which usually leads to anger in the open source community, double-talk from Redmond and confusion for the rest of us.

Not long ago, Microsoft dropped a white paper on how great a job it’s doing of “actively participating in open source.” You can download the white paper here, but we’ll warn you that the PDF crashed your editor’s Firefox browser multiple times but worked fine in Internet Explorer (seriously). That’s just a word of warning. That’s all we’re saying. Any irony you might derive from that little revelation is purely your own and not the responsibility of RCPU.

Redmond Channel Partner Online | Lee Pender: Why Does Microsoft Pretend To Be Open Source-Friendly?

As critics continue to question Microsoft’s commitment to working with the open source community, a key Microsoft official last week argued the company has made significant progress while defending its right to enforce patents. And he made his defense on the open source community’s turf: the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) held in San Francisco.

In a keynote address at OSBC, Robert Youngjohns, Microsoft’s president of North America sales and marketing, said skeptics should ignore the company’s storied history of open source bashing and focus instead on its newfound commitment to open technologies like the PHP dynamic scripting language and open file formats, as well as its pursuit of interoperability between Windows and Linux.

“You have to judge us by our performance and actions, rather than what we said,” Youngjohns said.

Despite Criticism, Microsoft Exec Defends Open Source Progress — Application Development Trends

That’s why the hardware hacking community is turning inwards to fund its ideas. Two open source hardware enthusiasts, Justin Huynh and Matt Stack, have started the Open Source Hardware Bank to fund hardware projects such as the microcontroller board pictured above.

Open Source Hardware Hackers Start P2P Bank | Gadget Lab from Wired.com

A recently uncovered Red Hat patent application for dynamic message routing on XML has some open-source advocates theorizing the company has quietly forsaken its promise to claim Linux IP only for defensive purposes.

Conspiracies are bubbling out of Slashdot and other sites over a 2007 Red Hat patent application for a “method and apparatus to deliver messages between applications.”

Red Hat patent app sparks open source lockdown fears • The Register

Community is the tonic that keeps corporate aspirations in line, just as community helps to keep individuals walking the straight and narrow of societal norms. As The Economist recently highlighted, new research suggests that “having a crowd around often makes things better.”

Protecting community from corporate | The Open Road – CNET News