Linux has succeeded as a product only because the community that supports it has organised itself systematically to create, share, test, reject, and develop ideas in a way that flouts conventional wisdom. Successful We-Think projects are based on five key principles that were all present in Linux. Yesterday I talked about Core and Contribute. Today, it's Connect.

Most of the assumptions on which our present economic system is based are based on nothing much better than “conventional wisdom”: which is a fancy way of saying “no basis at all, really, it just sounds plausible”. But sometimes conventional wisdom is wrong, and that’s what this series has been about: six things that ought to be impossible if conventional wisdom were correct.

It’s official: the openSUSE project Guiding Principles are now in force. The Guiding Principles are a framework for the project and give everyone a clear view of who we are, what we stand for, what the project wants and how it works. The Guiding Principles document was created by the openSUSE community and is embraced by Novell - the founder and largest sponsor of the openSUSE project.

One of the greatest things about the open source philosophy is that its principles can be applied to projects that help mankind. Content management systems, media apps, and gaming software all have their place in the FOSS ecosystem, but when projects like the Pink Army Cooperative come along, it reminds people of just how powerful the open source doctrine really is.

You know the results of FOSS communities are making a lasting impression when other groups try emulate their success by using the same concepts. The charitable organization Architecture for Humanity says they can bring about an "architectural revolution" by pairing the principles of collaboration and open source with needs of millions of people worldwide living in poverty today.

"The HTML Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of HTML Design Principles. This document describes the set of guiding principles used by the HTML Working Group for the development of HTML5, expected to define the fifth major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web..."

Conventional wisdom states that graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are easy and the command line is hard. Conventional wisdom isn’t always right.

Some people put their principles before their lives, dragging the whole of the human race along with them to a better place. But those are the really big, spotlight principles, like freedom of speech, equality and justice.

As free software projects balloon in size, many struggle to create and maintain a sense of community. One of the projects that has been most successful in its community-building efforts is the content management system Joomla!