Open source: What? Open source applications built on Microsoft software? The notion may be oxymoronic at best, but Aras is an oddball in both the enterprise and the open source community, Neil McAllister reports, in that it is built exclusively on Microsoft. Lest I forget, it’s still free. “An enterprise software company that spends more energy on software than on the hard sell. What proprietary vendor can say that?” Soft sell for open source apps. Columnist’s corner: Trains, trucks and devices. Last week’s CES show gave David Margulius pause, just thinking about how a mere 150 years ago “nobody had any devices whatsoever.” At least no notebooks, PDAs, iPods, Gameboys, et. al. “For IT professionals, it’s easy to lose sight of the dramatic changes that can occur in mere decades,” he writes in this week’s installment of Enterprise Insight. Then again, as Margulius points out, throwbacks to the 1800’s still prevail in the tech realm. Take railroads, for instance, which are in some cases winning the ROI wars over trucks.The news beat: IBM this week is announcing the first two in a series of SOA Leadership Centers for building local expertise in service-oriented architecture. A Google partner in China gets accused of encouraging piracy by the Motion Picture Association. And AMD’s CTO Phil Hester discusses hardware advances, graphics convergence, the home media center, in this interview. Technology Industry