Best of the blogs: The worldwide revenue from standalone open source software hit $1.8 billion last year, according to IDC. What’s more, the analyst firm predicts that revenue will soar to $5.8 billion in 2011. “Open source revenues will lag open source adoption. This makes sense because subscription revenues are recognized over the life of a support subscription, and because there’s a lot more free use than paid,” Matt Asay explains in this Open Sources post. “And [the] future is looking brighter every day.” (Disclaimer: IDC is owned by IDG, the parent company of InfoWorld.) From the Test Center: Microsoft has three major goals for the Orcas beta of Visual Studio. Those are to improve developer productivity, manage application lifecycles through Team Foundation Server and employ the latest technologies. “One major improvement is a new design surface for WPF applications,” writes Martin Heller. “I haven’t been able to crash Orcas Beta 1 at all.” Read the review here. Careers: Like most folks, Sean McCown got into his profession primarily by virtue of availability. Rather than becoming an IBM or Oracle DBA, he leaned toward Microsoft products because, “I was in a very small company, and we had SQL Server 6.0 and Windows and Exchange. I also had full access to MSDN and a group of guys who were experts in MS technologies,” he explains in Database Underground. It’s hardly coincidence, though, and the other side of the coin is that companies who saturate the market with information about their products do much better than those tending to close themselves off. “So all you vendors out there who think you’re too good for everybody, just remember this … if you make it hard enough to learn your product people will stop caring.” Security: Malware is not just evolving but, in so doing, is becoming nastier. “When I began fighting hackers and malware in the second half of the 1980s, Apple viruses ruled the land,” security guru Roger Grimes harks back. On to the present state of malware. “Good luck and keep your eyes open,” he concluded in this installment of Security Adviser. Okay, okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. Grimes delves into a Google paper entitled “The Ghost in the Browser: Analysis of Web-based Malware”, and calls it “one of the best reporting papers I’ve ever read.” Technology Industry