Your editor has just returned from the Linux Foundation's annual Collaboration Summit, held in San Francisco. LFCS is a unique event; despite becoming more developer-heavy over the years, it still pulls together an interesting combination of people from the wider Linux ecosystem.

For the past four years, the "brightest minds in Linux" have come together at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit to "tackle and solve the most pressing issues facing Linux today." The opportunity to solve is coming up quickly, and those who want in on the tackling had better move fast.

Guest commentator Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Ziff Davis Enterprise tells what, in his opinion, is important about the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit going on right now in Austin, Texas.

The Linux Foundation today announced the Linux Foundation Training Program, which will kick off with courses taught at the Linux Foundation’s Annual Collaboration Summit April 8 - 10, 2009 in San Francisco.

The open source community needs a federated but decentralized system for tracking bugs and patches, according to Mark Shuttleworth. Speaking in a keynote address at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in Sunnyvale this week, the amateur astronaut and Ubuntu founder called for better collaboration among open source developers and companies.

The Linux Foundation plans to hold an End User Collaboration Summit in New York City in October. The press release we received introducing the event said, "It's by invitation, but registration is free, in keeping with the idea of opening it to 'real' end users.

The Linux Foundation has released videos of the keynotes and panels from the recent Collaboration Summit

"When Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu founder and CEO of Canonical Ltd., spoke at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit at the Googleplex, he didn't talk about Ubuntu, patents, or hardware vendor partnerships. Instead he devoted his keynote speech to the importance of collaboration in fixing bugs and getting timely patches out to Linux users."

The Linux Foundation — the not-for-profit that keeps Linus in keyboards, and most recently, has been looking to glam things up a bit — earlier this month provided a first glimpse into its plans for the 2009 Collaboration Summit, to be held April 8-10 in San Francisco.