OStatic

In my inbox yesterday, along with the notes from my mom, forwards from relatives and friends who never really write, and a wide variety of great deals on fake watches, I discovered a press release from Funambol. That in and of itself isn't unusual, but what the open source mobile sync and push solution company was reporting is remarkable on several levels.

Many open source software companies are seeing increases in revenue, stronger migration rates and a general upswing in business thanks to the rather anemic economy. You don't need to write about open source to see this -- it's readily apparent to anyone skimming tech-related headlines. Funambol's announcement certainly mentioned the economy, and gave some truly impressive figures surrounding the project's growth -- but they weren't in relation to undeniably important financial gains. The jaw-dropping growth is happening somewhere that's even more critical in the long-term: the community.

Recently, the KDE Project has put a concerted effort into improving the community experience. In October, Lisa covered the relaunch of the KDE Forums, while new real world events such as Camp KDE and the upcoming joint Akademy/GUADEC Desktop Summit in Gran Canaria gives KDE fans a chance to meet in person.

The KDE team recently announced the KDE Brainstorm initiative. KDE Brainstorm, in practice, works much like Dell's IdeaStorm -- community members of all walks of life are invited to chip in their ideas for new and improved features and functions, with the wider community voting on (and fleshing out) these ideas. Ideas that generate enough interest are then reviewed further by developers, who work to make them happen.

The Linux Foundation and Sourceforge have joined forces to rebuild a community on the prime web real estate known as Linux.com.

In its former life, Linux.com featured a mix of unique content and aggregated stories from the wider Linux community. While it hosted forums and allowed reader comments, it wasn't fully collaborative. Late last year, Linux.com ceased updating the aggregated stories, and at the start of 2009, announced that the original content was also coming to an end, but that other (bigger) plans were afoot. The old Linux.com forum software then replaced the articles on the main page, and many were left puzzled about where on earth this rather memorable domain was headed.

The Linux Foundation and Sourceforge have put the transformation in motion -- but where the domain is headed is very much up to the Linux community. Linux developers and users alike are invited to give their thoughts on the IdeaForge on Linux.com.