Apple's delivery of Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) has Mac users all a-tingle, and somehow that success brought to mind Sun's turnaround idea of using open source to sell hardware. In a story on Sun's open source program, InfoWorld related the plans of Simon Phipps, who holds the intriguingly-titled post of Chief Open Source Officer. I don't expect to find that on a Microsoft business card any time soon, but someone at Apple’s delivery of Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) has Mac users all a-tingle, and somehow that success brought to mind Sun’s turnaround idea of using open source to sell hardware.In a story on Sun’s open source program, InfoWorld related the plans of Simon Phipps, who holds the intriguingly-titled post of Chief Open Source Officer. I don’t expect to find that on a Microsoft business card any time soon, but someone at Apple should have that job, and Steve Jobs should let him or her appear in public now and then. Sun has been an exceptional open source citizen, and that is winning Sun business. Sun has a volunteer skunkworks, and Sun’s treatment of OpenSolaris would make an excellent model for Apple’s Darwin.It turns out that you can’t milk a GNU without its consent. Monsoon Multimedia drank deeply of some GPL covered software, specifically, BusyBox, a very cool lightweight UNIX utilities bundle for embedded systems. The Software Freedom Law Center–I’m pleased just to know that the SFLC exists–filed suit on behalf of BusyBox’s creators. Odd business, though: If the SFLC argues that Monsoon accepted the GPL as a contract or license, then the spoils of victory will be lost revenue. But BusyBox is free. I’m far from a lawyer, but perhaps the judge can award damages to the authors of BusyBox based on what Monsoon would have had to pay them as consultants to do the job for them. I’d love to see the BusyBox developers hand Monsoon a tally of billable hours, with a note of thanks for Monsoon’s support of the project. Technology Industry