Best of the blogs: Reacting to Sun’s Simon Phipps, who posted about the different roles/stakeholders in an OSS community, Savio Rodrigues wonders if the discussion is even necessary. “Are there really folks at Sun who don’t ‘get OSS’ today? And if there are, shouldn’t these folks have been ‘educated’ prior to Sun open sourcing their software portfolio?” Rodrigues asks in this Open Sources post. Mr. Phipps weighs in here, too, with a bit of explanation. Green IT: It’s Christmas in August! Not really, but Ted Samson has the Green gadget guide for geeks just the same. We’re talking bamboo hardware, eco-friendly chargers, power-measuring devices here, folks. This post would do J. Peterman proud, though it’s a bit different. “My findings are more of the eco-friendly-tech variety, not exotic birch wood clogs and hand-woven wheatgrass sombreros,” Samson writes. “Oh, and my travels tend to be limited to the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, and the Internet, which is arguably environmentally friendlier than flying halfway across the globe to test-drive a camel-skin tote bag.” What else is in this one? A jacket replete with solar panels, among other goodies.Notes from the field: In an apparent attempt to anger both U.S. coasts, Cringe likens Microsoft to Boston’s Big Dig. “More and more, new Microsoft operating systems resemble massive public works projects, with endless schedule setbacks, cost overruns, and diminished expectations,” he grumbles in Vista SP1: You oughta know beta. It took Microsoft six months to release the schedule of when it will ship that beta, for instance. But, hey, it’s all good for a chuckle and Cringe gets his from Microsoft saying that Vista SP1 will not break any applications already running on the OS. Technology Industry