By Brian Gentile, Jaspersoft CEO.

It occurred to me recently that the open source movement is really nothing less than a renaissance.  Perhaps that sounds grandiose, but stay with me.

• Business

I had the opportunity to chat with Deb Woods about Open Source for America.  Take a look at what she has to say about creating a more transparent government and how open source can make us a stronger society.

• Government

Starting today, you'll see a few changes around opensource.com. We've made some updates based on community input. Thanks to those who have already taken our quick, six-question survey. Your feedback is very useful--keep it coming.

The most important change to the site was to our main RSS feed, http://opensource.com/feed. Starting today, this feed will be updated with each new article posted to the site, not just the posts appearing on the home page. It's a great way for you to keep up with the latest information from opensource.com.

• Should Be

More and more frequently, familiar "work" terms (like open source, collaboration, or crowdsourcing) jump out at me from television, movies, books, or the radio. Few corners of the world are unaffected by the culture shift towards collaboration. But sometimes, the subject matter makes you stop a second. How about this one: the Grammys and American Idol.  

• Life

Last fall, a group of researchers at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) released a study showing an abrupt leveling off in the number of editors and edits to Wikipedia, starting in about 2007.

• Business

What do you get when you combine two hard working women in computing and a 3D printer? Answer after the break...

• Education

We recently sat down with Dr. Tony O'Driscoll, co-author of the book Learning in 3D: Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and Collaboration, to talk about avatar-based Internet communities like SecondLife. Here's what he had to say about the way the Internet has evolved—and the business and industry culture changes that are happening as a result.

• Business

Jaron Lanier is certainly getting his share of press lately.  His latest guest starring role: a rant in Monday's very special episode of L. Gordon Crozier's technology column for the Wall Street Journal.  Seems like Lanier is becoming a go-to guy when one is in need of a sound bite denouncing "free culture" in all of its radical and dangerous forms.

• Education

Although it may be simple to conflate the Apps for Democracy and Apps for America contests with the exciting new Apps for Army contest, they really couldn't be more different. Together they represent an exciting experiment in what it takes to pull communities together around a problem.

• Government

In this short TED video clip, Yochai Benkler provides a useful framing of what he terms “social production.”

• Business

Patent decisions are usually pretty dry stuff, but In Media Technologies Licensing, LLC v. The Upper Deck Co. is a patent lawsuit about sports trading cards. This is what a patent claim for a trading card looks like:

• Law

Traditional media companies are in big trouble. You may have noticed. You know who else has noticed? David Pakman, currently a partner at the prestigious Venrock venture capital firm. You may also know David as the former CEO of eMusic—a fairly disruptive media company in its own right. David has over 300,000 Twitter followers and regularly blogs here about the “undoing of big media.”

• Business

We could be closer to consumer options for open source cars than ever before. Which begs the question, could the recent floor mat entrapment and pedal recalls from Toyota be solved in a more open way? Or better yet, could they have been prevented if they were designed and built the open source way?

• Life

If you use open source, you have no respect for intellectual property. Or at least, that’s what the International Intellectual Property Alliance seems to think. According to this article, the lobbying group is asking the US Trade Representative to put Indonesia on its "Special 301 Priority Watch List,” in part because of its policy encouraging the adoption of open source software by government agencies.

• Government

The contributions and participation since we launched opensource.com on January 25 have been awesome. We've had more than 1,600 users register with the site and make over 600 comments on the posts across all the channels. That's a great start. Whether you joined us on day one or yesterday, we continue to encourage and appreciate your participation.

• Should Be

It's the leading open source learning management system in the world. It provides 100s of 1000s (millions?) of students and teachers, learners and educators a means of collaborating, engaging content and organizing studies online. It's easy to tout the great things that Moodle has done for education in the dozen short years since it was created by Martin Dougiamas. It has certainly created and standardized the base-level of learning management systems available to schools throughout the world.

• Education

If you've ever watched a road bike race like the Tour de France, you know the peloton is the big group of riders that cluster together during the race to reduce drag. It's a great example of collaboration in action. But let's face it: the people in the middle of the peloton may go faster than they would otherwise, but they don't win the race.

When it comes to creating and innovating, most companies (and employees) are in the peloton. They are doing enough to survive, but they are stuck in the pack. And if they stay in the pack too long, they lose.

• Business

Cory Doctorow says "information wants to be free" slogan is "lazy, stupid shorthand."

(See discussions at Shareable.net and Utne Reader)

When celebrated science fiction writer, blogger, and copyright activist Cory Doctorow tweets, 40,000 followers glance at their phones.

• Life

Today, everywhere in our nation, families – adults, and their children -- are facing a tragic loss of future possibility and personal fulfillment because of high textbook prices. Fact: the cost of traditional textbooks has become a major impediment to students completing a college education, and/or deciding to enter college. It’s important to point out the scale of this problem, and its impact on students, teachers, and our American society.

• Education

On the teaching open source mailing list, the following question was recently posted:

• Education