AMD and Microsoft should take note that open source strategies bring painful problems. Sun Microsystems knows this all too well.

Just as Microsoft (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/21/microsoft_goes_open/) said it’s opening its APIs and AMD made its latest contribution to open source, controversy again bubbled up for Sun’s much-vaunted OpenSolaris project.

Apache Server co-founder Roy Fielding has resigned (http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/ogb-discuss/2008-February/004488.html) from Sun’s OpenSolaris Community saying he’s unhappy about the way Sun's behaving. The issue centers over who controls the OpenSolaris trademark - Sun or the governing community - with Fielding saying Sun wanted to have it's cake and eat it too (http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/watching-the-ripples).

The break follows criticism (http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/12/01/sun_openid_spat/page2.html) of Sun's handling of open source projects in December 2007.

This latest tiff will be painful for Sun, which despite trying its hardest (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/16/sun_buys_mysql/) to become simpatico with the open source community and developers, just can't seem to get the mix right.

The rumble came as chip manufacturer AMD announced (http://www.amd.com/gb-uk/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~123872,00.html) that the AMD Performance Library (APL) is now available as an open-source project. To celebrate, AMD has given APL a neat new name - Framewave version 1.0 - and set it up on Sourceforge (http://framewave.sourceforge.net/).

Framewave, which will be available under an Apache license, provides developers with a library of around 3,200 arithmetical routines mainly for image and signal processing. In the interests of industry harmony, AMD has made Framewave's application program interface (API) compatible with Intel's Integrated Performance Primitives (IPP) (http://www.intel.com/cd/software/products/asmo-na/eng/perflib/ipp/302910.htm).®

Additional reporting by Gavin Clarke

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