THE YEAR WAS 2006

This past year will be noted as one in which even the most traditional software companies who didn’t “get it” – such as Microsoft – satup and finally tried to listen. It was also a year in which the dynamics of the Linux community changed. There was a shift away from the mainstream media and users caring solely about “Linux,” to users becoming more interested in the fundamental concepts behind free and open source software. I know of many Windows users who discovered Firefox, Wikipedia, and Thunderbird in 2006, but who have no interest in making the switch away from their Mac OS X or Windows PC – yet they still do “get it,” and are increasingly getting involved in areas in which the different project communities overlap. In fact, a recently published book, Wikinomics, aims to draw various conclusions from these trends and is on its way toward being a bestselling examination of the power of communities like our own.