Happy to be labeled "expert" on something ;-)

Jokes apart, I am the CEO of Funambol, the mobile open source company. Over seven years, we built the #1 open source project in wireless, with over 2M downloads. And a nice business around it, selling a Carrier Edition to service providers (mobile operators, ISPs and portals). With Funambol, you get push email for the mass market (yep, that's your email on your RAZR).

I am an open source geek since I remember. It all started in the late eighties (gasp, I am that old...) in a lab in Pavia (Italy), where Alessandro Rubini was writing the mouse device driver for Linux - the first step to get Linux out of the hands of just geeks. I used/wrote/pushed open source since then. And I am definitely not stopping now...

Mobile is the next stop for open source. Actually, with 3 billion mobile devices out there, mobile is the best market ever for open source. If it worked for a bunch of mice, I can assure you that open source works even better for billions of devices. There is no other way to make sure your mobile application works on every device on the planet. A community effort is the only way. Open source solves the #1 issue in mobile: device compatibility. You need people for it. You need a community. You need open source. There is no other answer.

Oh, and I write a boring blog on Mobile Open Source as well, if you are interested.

fabrizio