On July 22, O'Reilly founder and CEO Tim O'Reilly launched this year's OSCON conference with a challenge for open source advocates to get involved in the quest for open government.

More than 70 organizations and individuals have joined to form a "unified voice" encouraging the U.S. government to support and participate in open source software.

FISL 10.0 in Porto Alegre, Brazil was the best yet, for many reasons. For a long time I have been impressed with how the FISL organizers (most, if not all of which are volunteers) have brought together government, industry and the community to put on an ever-larger and more complex event.

When it comes to software engineering, we need more of it.

Klaus Knopper is the creator of Knoppix and co-founder of the LinuxTag expo. He currently works as a teacher, programmer, and consultant. If you have a configuration problem, or if you just want to learn more about how Linux works, send your questions to: klaus@linux-magazine.com

LinuxTag once again features the best and brightest among open source. More than 10,000 visitors are expected at the Berlin conference starting June 24 and running through June 27. Many free projects are exhibiting. Prizes and a press conference started things off.

Market research firm IDC just finished a study of open source enterprise applications with decision makers in 515 European organizations. The result: open source is undergoing market expansion in business applications.