The methodologies of Open Source are not owned or guided by any one person. The closest thing we have are the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and support of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The OSI certifies what qualifies as an open source license.

Over the years, I came to appreciate a number of organizations that although not directly linked to free software and open source are of interest to the FOSS community. Pretty much everybody knows the free software foundation, the software freedom law center, the Linux foundation, The GNU project, the open source initiative, Creative Commons or Groklaw.

In our earlier article, "Facts and Friction on Open Source and Free Software" we have explained where "Open Source" is coming from and what is its relation to Free Software and the Free Software Foundation that represents it.

Over the last few months, open source has gained momentum at Stanford University in the form of the Stanford Open Source Lab. Inspired by groups like the Free Software Foundation, Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab, Drupal, Openflows Community Technology Lab, and MIT’s Open Course Ware, a few people at Stanford decided to band together and dedicate their time and energies to the development of free/open/libre learning and knowledge resources.

On September 19th, the GNOME Foundation and the Free Software Foundation will host a mini-summit on how to increase women's participation in the free and open source software (FOSS) communities.

GNU guru Richard Stallman sent me an e-mail the other day complaining that we erred by saying that the Free Software Foundation, of which he's president, promotes open source software. "We have never supported the idea of 'open source' because that idea denies the importance of users' freedom," he writes.

Sun Microsystems has become its own free software foundation, open-sourcing everything from Java to Solaris, and acquiring the open-source MySQL database for $1 billion in January of this year, as a way to grow its revenue.

“Open Source” advocate: «...I associate much more with the "Open Source" (also as Richard defines it) camp, and am open to the existence and use of proprietary software...» --

The question was recently asked by none other than the Free Software Foundation Latest News about Free Software Foundation, which then published its list of the highest-priority free software projects.