Participation and open access are key themes in Free software. It encourages dynamic community structures that blur the line between technology consumer and creator. This has been so successful that echoes of it can be found throughout the technology world from mobile app user engagement to game community content creation.

Faced with a potentially large threat to free/libre and open source software from patent consortium CPTN, the two organisations have collaborated publicly for the first time. Before Christmas Open Source Initiative (OSI) wrote to the German Federal Cartel Office asking them to investigate the acquisition of Novell assets by the CPTN Group as a possibly anti-competitive move by CPTN's four members.

Collaboration is the soul of open source. At the Linux Foundation's annual Collaboration Summit in San Francisco, which ended last Friday, the organization unveiled new collaboration tools hosted on its website for forming and maintaining workgroups to tackle the problems that remain on Linux's horizon.

Anyone who still thinks open source isn't ready for prime time hasn't been paying attention. Two events this week demonstrate how open source principles have put an entertainment juggernaut and a sports franchise at the top of their respective games.

There seems to be a disconnect between what users want for their computing needs, and what vendors think they want. A glaring example of this was made apparent to me at the Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON) earlier this week.