REDHAT-SPONSORED open source project Fedora 7 will be the platform for the Creative Commons LiveContent CD, which showcases open source software.

Now anybody who's ever been in the tech world has likely heard of free software licenses such as the ever famous GPL, as well as other open source licensing systems. But far fewer have heard of Creative Commons.

The growing success of open source software has naturally spurred on others to apply its lessons elsewhere. Open content is perhaps the most famous translation, notably through the widely-used Creative Commons licences.

For some time now, I've found the Creative Commons philosophy morally troubling in a way that the free software philosophy isn't, without being able to satisfactorily articulate precisely why.

The Creative Commons released LiveContent 2.0 a Free Live DVD. We checked it out and wanted to give you an overview of what it’s all about. Basically, it’s a Fedora Live DVD with free and open source content, that comes loaded with Creative Commons’ (CC) licensed material and all you favorite FOSS programs.

At teachingopensource.org, we think so, and we wrote a book to help. The following excerpt comes from the Foreword of our new textbook, Practical Open Source Software Exploration, which is licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA-3.0. I

Hear that? It’s the sound of servers in Switzerland sucking down information from social networking sites. Open-Xchange, an open-source e-mail and collaboration software maker, has set up a test Web site that allows people to pull in their contact information from various social networking services like LinkedIn and Facebook.

There was a time when open-source software was the domain of computer geeks and do-it-yourselfers with more time than money. But, as Oracle's legal salvo against Google highlighted last week, those days are long gone. Oracle (ORCL), through its purchase of Sun Microsystems, has become one of the largest purveyors of open-source software in the world.

HP has been quirky over the years when it comes to open source. It has been, traditionally, a company that supports open source -- especially in larger enterprises. While large businesses are a major focus for HP -- and it has supported open source in other ways -- a "smaller business" line of open source products has been a long time coming.