Funambol today announced that it has secured a major partnership with EarthLink. First, Zimbra + Comcast, and now Funambol + EarthLink. This is awesome news, and yet one more datapoint in open source's inevitable march to ubiquity. It's also a wonderful example of how open source has life beyond the enterprise. In this deal, Funambol is taking open source direct to consumers. People like you, your sister, and yo Funambol today announced that it has secured a major partnership with EarthLink. First, Zimbra + Comcast, and now Funambol + EarthLink. This is awesome news, and yet one more datapoint in open source’s inevitable march to ubiquity. It’s also a wonderful example of how open source has life beyond the enterprise. In this deal, Funambol is taking open source direct to consumers. People like you, your sister, and your grandfather.Funambol, the mobile open source software company, today announced it has licensed its address book synchronization software to EarthLink for use across the company’s wide range of applications and services. “EarthLink is pioneering the move to a more standards-based solution for address book synchronization,” said Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of Funambol. “Funambol’s open source software, based on SyncML, delivers on these requirements and gives companies the ability to reap the benefits of this largely untapped market.”Fabrizio told me several months ago that it’s a mistake to try to upsell one’s community, and this deal with EarthLink is a great example of monetizing a partner with both a need for the technology and for a business partner behind it. Many users get SyncML for free. They’re not the ones Funambol tries to sell to. Anyway, great news, Fabrizio and the Funambol team. This is a great win for open source, and for EarthLink. Open Source