OStatic

There are very few reasons I'd sign on for YACC (not that YACC -- I'm talking about Yet Another Credit Card ). The Linux Foundation is making my unwavering resolve on this front feel a little less resolute today.

The Linux Foundation is rolling out its Tux-adorned Visa Platinum Card. Through a partnership with CardPartner, Inc. and UMB Bank, the Foundation will receive $50 for each activated card and a percentage from every purchase made with the card. All of the proceeds from these cards will be used to create community technical events, as well as provide travel grants to open source innovators. Because no one wants a Tux-carrying card holder to rack up huge amounts of credit card debt in order to support these services, these proceeds will be combined with the funds raised from membership dues, Linux.com advertising, and event revenues.

There's one little domain name out there that's had a wild ride this year. In January, a rather cryptic post went up on Linux.com, a SourceForge web property, that said updates had been slowing -- and were as of that point ceasing -- because changes were in the works. Then came the silence on the wire.

In early March came the announcement that the Linux Foundation was taking the reins at Linux.com, transforming it from something rather static into something that could better capture the spirit of learning, experiencing, and giving back that is an enormous part of the operating system's allure. Input from existing Linux.com members and others interested in having a say was gathered through the IDEAFORGE submission tool, and the Foundation got to work at making these wishes a reality.

At this very moment, the little domain name is embarking on the next leg of its journey. The Linux Foundation is officially unveiling the new Linux.com, a product by the community, for the community.

openSUSE recently announced the dates and agenda for its very first Community Week. Much like the Ubuntu team's OpenWeek, the purpose of Community Week is to assemble and introduce new contributors all over the Linux-using world to each other, and the openSUSE Project. And while developers are a vital part of an open source community and are encouraged to attend and get involved in openSUSE's Community Week, participants don't necessarily need programming skills -- only a willingness to learn, connect and pitch in the skills they possess.

Community Week kicks off on Monday, May 11th and concludes on May 17th. Most of the events take place on Freenode, with individual components (such as openSUSE-specific discussions on KDE, GNOME, or marketing) having their own unique #openSUSE-project channels and schedules.

How do you manage, grow, and foster active involvement in a community? One way might incorporate planning several events at approximately the same time and venue. This is why you can rest assured that the organizers behind the Community Leadership Summit can help you learn to manage your project's community in the most effective way possible.

Jono Bacon, Ubuntu's community manager, officially announced the unconference (an event so focused on discussion that an open, organic schedule is required) on Sunday. The event itself takes place the 18th and 19th of July in San Jose, California. The summit is mere hours before OSCON 2009 kicks off -- in the very same convention center.

As KDE jumps boldly into the waters of its new brainstorming initiative, the Ubuntu Brainstorm team battles a strong current of incoming ideas.

Ubuntu's Brainstorm project has witnessed a steady increase in idea submissions since its inception, and given this upward trend and current workload, the team has decided to call for reinforcements. The Brainstorm team is seeking users familiar with Ubuntu's Brainstorm process to act as Idea Reviewers.

Remember the IBM Peace, Love, Linux campaign? Perhaps its impact was greater in some areas than others -- I remember seeing Tux's smiling face on taxi cab billboards (and spray painted on sidewalks) all over Boston. It was merely a month or two later I found myself nervously installing my first Linux distribution. Was this ubiquitous (and not terribly self-explanatory) ad campaign the reason I tried Linux? No, but I can't discount that the ad's approach and playfulness wasn't some sort of subliminal influence.

I'm not suggesting free software advocates hone Svengali-like powers and study hypnosis, but it seems that a lighter, not so tech heavy approach to promoting open source could be quite successful. It's not possible to completely divorce technology from open source software, of course, but for average users, what matters most when it comes to software is what they can do with it. An open source application is useful at face value, and has the potential to always be a little bit more.

And the average user doesn't care much about that. Many might like the idea, some might find they never fully understand the concept -- and a smaller number will find it so appealing, eventually, that they begin to modify their software. Having no desire to hack an existing open source application doesn't mean it isn't useful for its intended purpose right now.

This week I had a unique opportunity to talk with Ubuntu's community manager, Jono Bacon. As community manager, Bacon is the Ubuntu community's connection to Canonical, responsible for encouraging and supporting growth and harmony in the community.

This is no small feat, considering the recent rapid growth and adoption rates of Linux in general -- and Ubuntu in particular. Bacon shares a bit about the subtle (and not-so-subtle) nuances of managing and maintaining a healthy community -- from planning and assessing its growth, to encouraging (and appreciating) members who participate to the best of their abilities.

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.

At the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) late last month, Ubuntu community manager, Jono Bacon, spoke to attendees about community, and why it means so much to open source projects. Ryan Paul at Ars Technica put together a concise, informative overview of Bacon's SCaLE talk.

Bacon says that community -- and building a sense of belonging -- are crucial to growing and maintaining any open source project. No doubt this is due to the heavy element of voluntary participation in the open source world, but the belonging concept is one that any project or company -- open or closed, with paid employees or non-compensated volunteers (or any mix of the two) -- would benefit from applying to its management techniques. It is, without argument, one of open source's strongest traits.

Ben Kepes at Cloud Ave. offers some interesting analysis of a question Yuuguu CEO Anish Kapoor recently tackled on his company's blog: Has software as a service (SaaS) killed open source as a business model?

The question raised, of course, is why these concepts are at odds at all -- why are they mutually exclusive? They aren't, per se (SaaS companies can -- and do -- offer their code under open licenses), but Kapoor imagines that for some companies, SaaS takes a bit of the shine from open source. Kepes counters that while this might be the case, SaaS has a fair bit to gain from the open source model.