Linux user groups across the region are ramping up efforts and activities this year to raise public awareness of open source and attract more members.

Recently Ubuntu/Canonical contacted me for the use of buntu in our domain name. I had emailed them long before any announcement of the site but with no reply until the site began to attract visitors/users.

I understand that Ubuntu/Canonical has a job to do when it comes to protecting their best interest. But Ourbuntu is doing nothing more than giving users the ability to setup a Ubuntu/Linux based system and sell it at no cost. Which helps promote the use of opensource software.

So what prompted me to show such a deep interest in a product after reading for only 5 minutes about it? It was the open nature of the product’s design philosophy on both hardware and the software front. It is hacker-friendly, easily customizable, *built on the Linux platform and hence guaranteed to attract a large user and developer community.*

Most trends in the open source market come down to one word. Scaling. To stay worthwhile a project must grow. It must attract new developers, new community members, and new money. It must scale in complexity and functionality.

Now there is also a new kid in town called Linux, and although it has been around in one form or another since 1991, it's now starting to attract the attention of disenchanted Windows users.
What makes Linux special is that it runs on any Windows PC and it is Open Source software. This basically means it can be downloaded for free from the internet (www.linux.org).

Software developers, academics, development groups and decision makers from Central Asia and Afghanistan met in the Tajik capital Dushanbe to see how the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) could be of help to the region.

Maybe it’s a coincidence but this week has seen evidence of tension between commercial open source vendors and elements of the open source user community. Matt Asay stirred up something of a hornet’s nest with his post questioning how open source vendors can find ways of encouraging users to contribute either code of cash in return for free software

Consider: a large population of users who can report virii. Many people with the same "itch" (to be free of virii). A subsegment of both communities with the aptitude and interest in killing these virii. Should be a perfect market for open source, right? Architecture of participation and all that....ClamAV seems to make the argument that it is.

Theseus, the German government-funded program to develop new semantic Web technologies, will launch a competition in November to attract talented software programmers, including experts from the open-source community.