I'm beginning to think the folks at Zenoss never sleep. How else can the popular open source network monitoring software vendor explain all the recent announcements and news they've been making the last few days? Let's start with the contest.

The new Community ZenPack Contest captures the cloud computing craze. "Zenoss in the Clouds ZenPack Contest" is aimed at users who want to create modules, or ZenPacks, to allow Zenoss to monitor cloud infrastructureand service providers, or deploy cloud-based technologies.

The folks at open source collaboration platform MindTouch conducted a poll recently to get a sense of who open source executives think are the most influential people in the industry. More than 50 execs were polled from Europe and North America and no one was allowed to vote for anyone in their own company. The results were ranked according to the effect each nominee has on the open source industry, and some of the winners may surprise you.

It's no secret that certain parts of the world favor open source more than others do. Today, Actuate, which specializes in open source business intelligence applications, is out with its fourth annual open source survey results. The results are based on responses from global business and I.T. professionals from the financial services sector, public sector and the manufacturing industry. This year the survey also included Chinese respondents. Here are some of the highlights from the results.