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Anyone can whine. But lending support and making genuine contributions is what makes the F/OSS wheels go 'round.

Lots of startup projects on the big online free software repositories have been abandoned right after being created, or linger in alpha stage for many years. I have founded four open source projects, of which two have been successful, while the other two just stopped and faded away. From that experience, here's some practical advice on how to make your project more well-known, how to motivate others to join your project, and how to make sure it stays alive and active for a long time -- maybe even reaching a 1.0 release (which should be part of every project's goal, should it not?).

Open-source software's influence continues to spread worldwide, but the technology's greatest challenges lie ahead as it's asked to take on an increasing number of business functions. Business customers want a long-term road map, even though open-source leaders aren't completely comfortable with the idea of looking that far ahead.

FlightGear has announced plans to demonstrate their free and open source flight simulator project at the Southern California Linux Expo. The FlightGear team will use their open-source flight simulator to drive a full scale 747-400 simulator cockpit. The FlightGear demonstration will take place at SCALE 3x on Feb 12-13, 2005.

It's 2005 and the Linux juggernaut shows no sign of slowing down. Everywhere you look, Linux seems to be gaining steam. Home users are finally finding that they can use a Linux distribution without learning esoteric text commands. Everyday Linux is becoming more user-friendly and accessible. In fact, distributions have matured to the point where they can be the only operating system on a home computer. Except for one thing – Gaming.

IBM has announced plans to demonstrate their new OpenPower 710 at the Southern California Linux Expo. The Southern California Linux Expo, will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on February 12-13.

Bill Gates' claim that the open source methodology encourages forking was slated by one UK analyst on Monday.

In the Linux environment, Rational Purify provides a comprehensive solution for finding errors and memory leaks.

One of the main reasons for the Firefox browser's successful seizure of market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the desire to escape the inundation of PC-slowing spyware. However, spyware experts indicate that with its increased popularity, Firefox itself will become a target for spyware creators, who are already poking at the open source browser alternative.

The polls are closed and the results are in for the 2004 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards. Among the winners are Firefox, MySQL and OpenOffice.org. The Members Choice Awards allow members of the Linux community to choose their favorite products in a variety of categories including Linux Distribution of the Year, Office Suite of the Year and Web Browser of the Year. Winners will be presented with an award at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Boston and will also receive a logo for their website.

A full list of nominees along with detailed results can be found at http://www.linuxquestions.org/awards/. This is the fourth annual LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards. Past winners include Red Hat, PostgreSQL and Mozilla.

Sun Microsystems is a company that's made good use of its visionary impulses to survive against bigger rivals. So it's fitting that Jonathan Schwartz is the company's No. 2 executive.

Data Center Virtualization Software Company to Participate in Lab's Data Center Linux Working Group

In the '70s TV show "Happy Days," the character Fonzie was so cool that he could make a dead jukebox play just by giving it a thump in the right spot. If Fonzie were working on computers today, he'd probably use some of these tricks for getting a reluctant hard drive to come across with its data.

Bill Gates talks about computer security, competition, software bundling and how he lives with the downsides of his wealth and fame.

The first issue of TUX will be released February 14. If you've yet to subscribe to this new digital magazine, please hurry and do so now. Subscriptions are FREE! If you have already subscribed, we thank you and hope you enjoy your soon to be delivered first issue of TUX.

This is the second in a series of interviews with Quantum GIS (QGIS) developers and users. Today we travel to Sweden to meet Lars Luthman (known as larsl on IRC). The interview was conducted by Tim Sutton and Gary Sherman over Internet Relay Chat.

I am a systems administrator for a large company with 150 locations and 15,000 employees. My company's Linux deployment started with one project and 12 servers; a year later we're up to 45 servers, and soon will have more than 300 desktop users when we convert an existing set of Windows workstations to Linux. To manage this growing Linux environment, I rely on many open source applications.

I've reported in Windows IT Pro UPDATE several times over the years about Linux and its potential to unseat Windows Server as the most used enterprise OS. As a general rule, each January seems to bring a collection of "This Will Be the Year of Linux" stories, typically from analysts who've been bowled over by the Linux hype. To be fair, I've always assumed that Linux and Windows would some day run neck-and-neck in the server world, with Linux's perceived security, cost, and reliability advantages as the major reasons. Also, the past few years have been tough on Microsoft, as the company has suffered through a mind-boggling series of security snafus.

Community developers claim the Linux Standards Base could be the perfect retort to fragmentation scare stories banded about by critics of open source

According to the constitution (5.2. Appointment), project leader elections should begin "nine weeks before the leadership post becomes vacant, or (if it is too late already) immediately."