There's absolutely no denying that we're in a terrible economy right now. Unemployment is way up over the last year and consumer spending is down significantly. So what's a person to do for Christmas gifts this year? the gift of Linux!

Microsoft’s proposed $45 billion buy of Yahoo would give the Redmond, Wash company control over a top open source e-mail company, open source projects and an open source infrastructure. On September 17 of 2007, Yahoo bought Zimbra for $350 million. Yahoo’s infrastructure is built on BSD. Yahoo has released a myriad of software to the open source community and even sponsors some open source projects. So this deal would put Microsoft directly into the open source software business.

Michelle Murrain is a great example of what the FOSS community is all about. She's complicated: she calls herself a "scientist turned technologist turned theologian turned writer," all blended into one person. She's also an active supporter of and contributor to open source software projects.

An open-source version of Windows would mean not only would we publish Windows source code, we would make it free. That's what open source means. We wouldn't be hosting Minority Student Day if we open-source Windows because we wouldn't have enough profit to pay people, let alone invite in people from the community.

I'm not saying open-source is a bad thing, but it doesn't pay the bills in this company, so we can't embrace that way of doing things. ... We give out free soda pop to everybody who works here. We make our stuff free, people gotta give back the soda pop -- it's just inconsistent with what we do around here.

Ignorance, thy name is Ballmer.

Apple gets a lot of grief for being a net pillager of open source. The company has adopted open-source software into critically important products, yet gives little in return (so the story goes). And yet the Mac gets a lot of love from the open-source crowd. Why? What has Apple done to deserve it?

This new book "Open Advice" is the answer to "What would you have liked to know when you started contributing?". 42 prominent free and open source software contributors give insights into the many different talents it takes to make a successful software project, coding of course but also design, translation, marketing and other skills. They are here to give you a head start if you are new.

Following on from the success of the Google Summer of Code program, Google is pleased to announce this new effort to get young people involved in open source development. We've teamed up with the open source projects listed here to give student contestants the opportunity to learn more about and contribute to all aspects of open source software development

"This month, Packt columnist and open source enthusiast Mayank Sharma explores the economics behind open source projects, what they do with their donations and how crucial they can be to their future."

This weekend I was reminded of another reason that I love open source software: A transparent development process. Only in open source software will you be able to talk directly to the developers of a software project and give them your input. This is one of the reasons that open source projects tend to focus specifically on the requirements of the users. Let me tell you my story...