From the outside (and often times from within, too), the success of healthy open source projects defies all logic. Scores of individuals from all over the world, all of whom have different skill levels, use cases, experience, native languages, and time zones, collaborate together in order to help make a project succeed.

InfoWorld's annual BOSSIES recognize the best free and open source software the world has to offer to businesses, IT professionals, and productive individuals who rely on computers to get work done.

"In a previous blog entry I discussed Net Neutrality the importance to protect our individuality and cultures within the World Wide Web.Perhaps, I didn’t explain it enough, perhaps at the time of writing my blog I didn’t understand it enough, but now I have come to the realization of the significance of this issue, and how a world of ‘Free Culture’ is vital to us, as individuals and as a w

So we can be a hero, just like you, just like you… the higglytown heroes.

How do you measure the value of free and open source software (FOSS)? That's a puzzler, because it's, well, free. Moreover, a popular distribution like Linux can incorporate the contributions of thousands of individuals working remotely from around the world.

Sometimes our best intentions give way to our worst, for a wide variety of reasons. This is as true of corporate amalgamations of individuals as it is of those individuals on their own, and it's as true for open-source companies as it is for proprietary companies.

First they wrestled down Microsoft, now they're litigating against other big IT players: Eolas intends to enforce its patent on web technologies and plug-ins for integrating interactive content at all cost. However, a partner of the legal firm representing Eolas assured the readers of German Focus magazine that the vendor does not intend to cripple the internet.

"The Open Document Foundation, which consisted of three individuals, disbanded," said Marino Marcich, managing director of the ODF Alliance. "The Foundation's proposals in OASIS did not receive sufficient votes -- quite common in any standards-setting body. Over the past few years, I have worked with the individuals involved. It's unfortunate that they chose to eventually disband the Foundation, but I wish them well."

"...The signers of the present Manifesto, launched in the World Social Forum of 2009, call all citizens of the world and their organizations to get involved to recover and put in common humanity's and Earth's actual and futur goods, so that their management shall be assumed in participative and collaborative ways by those concerned : individuals, communities and at the level of the humanity in the