In the last couple of years we’ve begun to notice that in addition to the folks who visit FOSS Force on a regular basis to read our articles, we’re starting to see a community develop. We mainly see this in the comments sections at the bottom of each article, where many of you have become regulars by posting often, agreeing or disagreeing with our articles, and offering ideas from your own experience.
To us, it feels as if those of you who contribute your thoughts and ideas by regularly commenting have become a part of our site, a community of people who publicly represent what FOSS Force is about, just as much as Larry, Hunter, Ken, Isaac and the rest of us who write and produce the site. In other words, you’ve become a part of who we are, and although we have never met you, we feel as if you are friends of ours.
Let’s build on that, shall we? Let’s celebrate you, the community of readers who congregate and express yourselves through comments on our site, and make you an even more important part of FOSS Force than you already are. In other words, let’s do a little old fashioned community building.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
This is the second time in three years that IT-oLogy’s longest running conference has been cancelled. In 2014 the event was cancelled, evidently due to logistical problems as IT-oLogy was in the process of launching the first 
Linux Foundation adopts plantation model: The biggest FOSS story this week came on Wednesday when free software activist and Linux kernel developer Matthew Garrett made public that on last Friday the Linux Foundation had 
Is Ubuntu the new Novell? It probably wasn’t news to anybody when Microsoft failed to renew it’s deal with SUSE when it expired at year’s end. Many with long memories will remember that way back when SCO was still a viable company, Microsoft inked a deal with Novell, which was then the proud new owner of the SUSE Linux distro. Among other things, the deal gave SUSE users a free pass against getting sued by Microsoft for infringing any of its patents. As part of the deal, Microsoft purchased tons and tons of SUSE support contracts to sell to enterprise customers who might need to keep a Linux machine or two running, which were reportedly given away. Mainly, Microsoft was using SUSE as its official Linux distro, and as a testing ground for Microsoft’s attempts to get Windows to work and play well with Linux.
One of my New Year’s resolutions this year is to only use cloud services when absolutely necessary. Web apps are great tools when you need to collaborate at a distance, but other than that you’re better off keeping your work on your own machines, for privacy reasons if nothing else.