I think Microsoft sees the European public sector as the vanguard of the fight against open source," said RedMonk analyst James Governor and hiring Aigner will give the company insight into its foe's methods.
Sony, for example, licensed Helix servers and audio-video compression software for its Altair home entertainment appliance. Red Hat and Novell will include RealNetworks' media player with their operating systems
But it's not just for entertainment: DRM also will govern confidential documents and other mainstream business information, said Martin Fink, HP's vice president for Linux, speaking at a keynote address at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo.
But isn't the entertainment technology project you announced today - Mugshot - based around the kind of online collaboration technology at the heart of web 2.0? Three or four years ago, open source providers enjoyed plenty of attention.
Aside from all the enterprise applications, it's worth remembering the iPod is first and foremost an entertainment device. Seats that connect iPods to aircraft entertainment systems are expected from a number of airlines from this year.
Such findings are a telling insight into the ways open source can be seen as a threat by large software companies such as IBM, according to Dave Rosenberg, chief executive of open source start-up MuleSource.