Among the many reasons to be thankful for Linux and all that is FOSS are qualities like portability, flexibility, comprehensiveness, a cooperative nature, receptivity to innovation -- oh, and the fact that open source makes such things possible as an electric motorcycle that can tear up the highway at 130 mph.

Since we’re beginning into a new year, I thought it would be appropriate to share my thoughts on some of the changes that I believe are needed in the Linux and FOSS world in order to make things better for everyone. Here’s a few of my thoughts.

This coming Thursday is Thanksgiving in America. As I have yet to make any progress in convincing the Swiss to also make it a holiday, and we tend to have rather large Thanksgiving dinner gatherings, we generally have our celebration the weekend before or after the actual day.

Since today is Halloween, I thought that an article discussing some of the scary things in the FOSS world would be a nice touch.

Seriously, I have no clue why everyone feels like February and March are the *perfect* months for holding a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) event. Not only does it make it extremely difficult to choose which ones to attend, it leaves the rest of the year (all the way to the end, when FOSS.IN happens) uncovered, and perfect hunting grounds for companies who are not exactly known to be sending the FOSS world greeting cards at Christmas...

Free and open source software (FOSS) is only beginning to find a foothold in computer science departments in North America. FOSS tools may be used in teaching or be the subject of research or special committees, but few departments include courses that introduce students to the FOSS community.

Every year, for the last couple of years, FOSS community Nepal has been getting a small stall to showcase whatever they have to the unusually large mass that come to witness the event. Not that FOSS is going anywhere in Nepal, but still that opportunity to try and create awareness existed.

Many things money cannot buy; I think most of us have left jobs, even when we thought we couldn't afford to, because we just couldn't take it anymore, and no amount of money would have made us stay. It's no different in FOSS.

A FOSS Hut is an area dedicated to a specific focus area in FOSS, be it a project like KDE, community like SMC, user groups, special interest groups like mappers or start ups depending on FOSS.