I follow a lot of mailing lists…all of them either Linux or open source in nature. Some of these lists I have been following for years. And from those lists I have seen trends come and go. I have seen technologies blossom and die.

This question keeps cropping up every once in a while on different LUG lists where I lurk. It is a fairly established fact now in the FOSS world (or for that matter in the software world) that businesses can be both Open Source as well as commercial (ie: for profit). However...

A few clarifications on sorting lists of lists individually and universally.

Very little is done quietly in a giant multi-national corporation. Exceptionally high-profile firms like Google undergo even more scrutiny, making it somewhat unusual to discover they've been developing numerous projects — in the open, and Open Source-licensed — that are all but unknown. As odd as it may be, that is exactly the case at Google.

"There are many services that will host your project's source code, mailing lists and bug trackers. While very few of these services charge for their services, most of them are built on proprietary software. Worse, some of them have started adding adverts for proprietary software in their mailing lists, or refusing projects with certain free software licenses [...] So, what's the alternative?

Charlie lists ten projects that have been on ice for years and that are more than worthy of being revived. The C&C-like "Boson" and original destroyable-terrain "Slickworm" are on that list.

The world biggest Open Source contest, the Le Trophees Du Libre 2007, with over 60,000 Euro in prizes named the winners for each of the categories. The goal of the contest, which is sponsored by the Free SOftware Foundation, Cetril, the EU, IBM and numerous other sponsors, is to promote promising Free Open Source Software.

If you’d like to pick [the] brains [of the biggest names in open source], not to mention those of other open source professionals, get yourself over to the CIO Executives Online forum before the end of the week.

The end of the year is a self-indulgent time, when those who write about technology stop making lists of the best, worst, and most mind-numbingly mediocre applications they find and pause to make lists about tech trends in the upcoming year.