Sun Microsystems on Wednesday will release details of a new award program meant to spur growth and activity within the company's open-source efforts, according to a post by Sun's open-source officer, Simon Phipps, on his corporate blog.

Following on from the success of the inaugural Open Source Content Management System Award, UK publisher Packt is pleased to announce details of its follow up. With new categories and an increase in prize money, the 2007 Open Source CMS Award will launch on July 16 and is expected to appeal to a broader range of projects.

I have a degree in Economics, however, I have never actually worked as an Economist. I am still interested though, and religiously read all the reports on the Fed, the business section of the newspaper, and once a year, the winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics.

The Torvalds-Simpsons Prize is an experiment to see if the Open-Source community can influence mainstream media to give our hero, the one and only Linus Torvalds, a cameo appearance on a regular episode of The Simpsons.

Packt Publishing has announced the overall winner of their 2007 Open Source CMS Award and it's Drupal! This first place award comes with a cash prize of $5,000, the highest of the cash prizes offered, which will be used by the Drupal Association to help the Drupal project flourish.

Have you tried Vista and wound up with one of the many horror stories? Tech website DVICE wants to hear your story. They're even willing to put up a prize for the best Vista horror tale: a new 2 GB Toshiba Gigabeat MP3 player. Just head over to DVICE.com and post your story in their comments section by 5pm Friday. The best story wins the prize.

"The FFII congratulates Eric S. Maskin, an economist who has long criticised the patenting of software, for receiving the 2007 Nobel Prize for Economics. Prof. Maskin and two colleagues receive the Prize for research into the optimal design of economic mechanisms.

Even if all open source communities aren't created equal, there are several characteristics that stand out amongst those which flourish. Qualities and tendencies which are often taken as a given within the context of open source but can and do go missing within other types of communities.

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), said that it was putting up a 2,500 Euro prize in its fight against Microsoft's attempt to gain international standardisation for its Office format.