I’m on this a bit late but Om Malik has a very nice post about the Vyatta open source router platform. The plan is to sell their own hardware but the software is free to download.

Within the article he links to a couple of other open source projects: Asterix open source PBX system, and the Open Source Wireless Mesh project.

Open source has a great potential to save money for the small business market. I would like to see municipal government projects for economic development start to consider helping businesses set up shop using open source software by providing consultants and maybe server space.

Minneapolis will soon have its own wireless mesh spanning the city. That will bring the Internet to the small business. Let’s see how we can then bring them an open source solution for their computing needs. This would not only help the small business but it would stimulate growth in our own vibrant open source community.

For that matter, the City itself should be considering open source solutions to save money. As far as I know, Minneapolis is steeped in Microsoft licenses which I’m sure they pay dearly for.