A work colleague and I got into a discussion recently about online communities; the common threads or characteristics that occur amongst them and what key differences exist; and particularly whether there are recurring and crucial elements that, when present, make certain communities succeed, and when absent, make others fail.
Of particular relevance to my recent indulgence into Ubuntu is the epiphany I came to during the course of the discussion: The greatest examples of passionate online collaboration and vibrant community interaction I’ve seen occur in the open source and free software …

Ever the curious sort, I’ve just finished downloading and installing Windows XP Service Pack 3. I’d hoped to find some dramatic new features – or in fact any noticeable changes – however based on what I’ve seen so far this isn’t going to prove the case.
First off, there seems to be a fair amount of confusion as to whether SP3 has been formally released yet, and near as I can tell it hasn’t.
As covered in ZDNet (“UPDATED – XP SP3 available for download from Microsoft“) the release …