"Excactly two years ago - on the 14th of January 2007 - LaTeX Community has gone online. Though nothing more than a simple bulletin board, its growth (about 14,000 posts, 3,000 registered users and 3,000 visits per day) has shown, that LaTeX users all over the world were already waiting for a place to find help and exchange their knowledge.

If the rocky reception of KDE 4 has done anything, it has forced the KDE project to realize it needs to listen to users more closely. One of the first results of this realization is the new Community Working Group (CWG).

"...Remember that Ubuntu is built on Community and Community is the number one reason why it is successful. People like me and you building upon the shoulders of giants. Lets continue to improve the communities around us, celebrating what makes us all unique. Without Ubuntu and without community we are nothing."

Like social Web sites, open source software is most valuable when it has a strong community around it, a community that has invested time and effort into learning the technology, creating features, submitting bug fixes, and creating documentation. Open source is also about empowering users to participate and not simply consume software.

Sean Tilley of the Diaspora Project explains a strategy to move over to an Open Governance model, and how it can affect community developers in a positive and empowering way.

When I think of Linux, I think of community. There is lots more to Linux, but it is community that springs to my mind. That is probably because it is like a Second Life for me. I spend much time out there, in the Linux community. But when I think of community, I think of only one thing, Ubuntu.

In this interview we talk with Adam. In specific, we talk about: * What’s new in the latest Mandriva release * Relating directly to the users instead of the developer community * Differences between user priorities and developer priorities * Deciding what should be included in the distribution * What will become of the “year of the Linux desktop” idea?

As free software projects balloon in size, many struggle to create and maintain a sense of community. One of the projects that has been most successful in its community-building efforts is the content management system Joomla!

What's the next best thing for Linux users who can't attend an open source community conference in person? Online workshops like last week's Ubuntu Open Week, where upwards of 300 participants per session showed up to learn more about the popular Linux distribution, the community, and its teams.