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.

People who enjoy digital photography as a creative outlet are very familiar with software products from companies like Adobe, Corel, etc. Most of them are also likely familiar with what until recently was the premier open source photo editor, the Gimp.

When I first found out about open source software, I felt the sky was the limit — with the source code, I could do anything now! But after working on open source ERP for the last seven years, I’ve come to realize that customizing software, even open source software, should not be taken lightly.

Although OpenOffice.org is an open source project with its own community, the core team that does the bulk of the actual coding and quality assurance is based in Hamburg, Germany. Recently, I had a chance to visit the developers behind this key open source project.

Why don't more people use OpenOffice, the free and open source alternative to Microsoft Office? Microsoft has spent years and dollars engineering creative ways to keep people using its costly software and preventing them from switching to OpenOffice -- that's one explanation, writes Lou Dolinar.

To be honest, for a couple of years now I have been pretty skeptical about the future of Free and Open Source software in Finnish schools and education sector in general. In Finland we have a lot of open source expertise and know-how. We have developers. I also assume that majority of the (liberally) higher educated people in Finland, at least know what is "Open Source" and "Linux".

Today I downloaded and installed the latest stable version of OpenOffice, version 3.2.1. There were a few things that I noticed that gave me great reason for concern. Based on what I saw, I have serious doubts as to whether OpenOffice.org will continue to be free software/open source.

This Thursday, June 5th, Tim Ansell will give a presentation "Gaming for Freedom." Tim, Founder of the Thousand Parsec project, will explore the universe of Free and Open Source computer games, drawing on his personal experience as a case study for successfully building and contributing to an Open Source game project.

There are number of factors coming together that lead me to believe that open source's moment is right now, today, this year.