For me, the high point of the conference was the chance to listen to people like RMS, Eben and Jimmy Wales - and a lot of other very interesting people with very interesting ideas.

Because we were sort of immersed in ideas for three days, I shall structure this report around these “ideas”.

Software patent law must be simplified if not completely abolished. The concept that a routine or function is somehow "intellectual property" is ridiculous. How many times have you had an idea and found out someone else had the same idea? Patents were designed to prevent stealing of ideas but two independent people creating the same idea are not stealing from each other.

1 week ago, I submitted to http://ideas.mandriva.com/en/ my proposals/ideas for Mandriva 2010.0. In order to let people comment on them, I will post the list of my submissions.

Often I get ideas when working on a PC, ideas for things that would be nice to have on my system. Most of the time I sooner or later discover someone else had the same idea and build the thing I was thinking of only better.

When a home user switches over to GNU/Linux, the major idea behind this change is enjoying and supporting Open Source freedom. People want to use Freeware. It's free for everyone and follows the philosophy of the free exchange of ideas between everyone.

A lot of the past discussions on this site involved the question of idea ownership, mostly as part of the overall discourse on Free Software. I've usually been the one to state that ideas cannot be owned or at the very least fall under some sort of collective ownership. Today, however, I believe I was wrong.

Since Mark Shuttleworth said that moving the Metacity window buttons to the left "opens up the space on the right nicely", lots of button ideas came out. The most controverted one is probably Esfera, an idea which Mark forwarded to the Ayatana mailing list. A recent idea by Izo makes a lot more sense than all the previous ideas. Have a look (it's called "The Workflow Button")...

Plat'Home, Linux pioneers in Japan and creators of the diminutive OpenMicroServer, are running a contest called "Will Linux Work?" They are basically asking people to submit crazy/extreme environments or ideas using their Linux servers and see if they work.

Great ideas spring up every day, but only in certain conditions are they able to bloom. Open-source software is, in fact, one of the best places for these great ideas to bloom.