At Open Source This, we cover the world of Opensource, Copyleft and Freeware.

We also allow users to post an idea / app / script / or website that they would like to see an open source version of.

Other users can then vote and comment on each idea - adding their own ideas into the project.

Potential developers browse through the ideas and, hopefully, pick up an open source project that there exists a need for.

Read more.

Mark Shuttleworth is one of our favorite open source celebrities. He does great things for the community, he's affable, and he promotes not only Ubuntu but GNU/Linux and FOSS in general. And it seems that he's always on the go -- from this conference to that conference to this meeting to that one, anywhere from California to Korea to Spain. While Canonical's CEO tours the world, Chief Operating Officer Jane Silber makes sure the company runs smoothly, that all the servers stay up, and that releases stay on schedule. She's hiring, too, so you may want to watch this video extra carefully; it's entirely possible that Jane Silber could be your boss one day....

Since Fortify released its security study, unleashing the FUD flood, I have been waiting for someone to give it a good fisking.

Today we have a winner. Meet Emma McGrattan, senior vice president of engineering for Ingres, an open source database outfit.

McGrattan is no dirty hippie blogger. She is a candidate for the board of Eclipse, from which the photo was taken. And she’s a graduate of Dublin City University in Ireland, for my money the real fighting Irish.

Her main points:

1. There are other security toolkits other than Fortify. Just because you don’t use their system doesn’t mean you don’t care.
2. When reading vendor-sponsored studies consider the source. Always a wise move.
3. Open source projects in Fortify’s Open Review report fewer defects per thousand lines of code than proprietary products in the same review. I didn’t know that.

Many of Fortify’s recommendations are cheap and easy to implement, McGrattan notes, and all projects should do more to protect their users.

Like post a security-specific e-mail alias on your Web site and have an expert on standby for questions concerning attacks.

Being transparent about your own vulnerabilities is also a good thing. Ingres is. Transparency does a lot more for everyone’s security than opacity. That’s just my personal bottom line.

One more point. Fortify’s study chose 11 open source projects to research. Ingres was not one of them.

One of the more interesting points made at OSCON involved a little political jiu jitsu.

That is, piracy hurts open source too.  (This software pirate lives at Tuxwatch.)

Louis Suarez-Potts, who is community manager for Open Office, suggested that many users disdain open source because they can get proprietary titles “for free.”

This is true, but it’s unclear to me what the open source movement should be doing about this.

There is no direct financial loss to Open Office when someone has a pirated copy of Microsoft Office. To the extent that BSA enforcement actions cause fear in the market, that just benefits open source, so why join it?

On the other hand if we helped Oracle enforce its license terms we might accelerate the move to mySQL and Ingres.

A ComputerWorld article on Suarez-Potts’ speech went on-and-on with numbers on software piracy, noting its continued prevalence in the U.S.

Granted, but if those pirates all quit and downloaded open source code tomorrow would it make a difference?

What should the attitude of open source be to the proprietary industry’s ongoing enforcement efforts? My own attitude is welcoming, but faintly apathetic. What’s yours?

Mark Shuttleworth wants a great Linux desktop. Google, LiMo and Symbian are looking for an interface competitive with the iPhone.

How can open source achieve the breakthroughs it needs and beat Apple at its own game?

What about cash and fabulous prizes?

The vendors who are seeking to mass-produce these wonders should get together and offer a big cash prize. Make it a contest.

My idea here is modeled on the X-Prize which delivered the SpaceShipOne, now preparing for commercial launch as Virgin Galactic.

Ubuntu, Dell, GNOME, anyone who wants a Mac-like Linux interface could get together one pot of money. Symbian, Google, and LiMo, through their partners and backers, could put up another pot for an iPhone-like interface.

Bang the drum, set a deadline, you can probably sell this one as a reality show. Winner goes into production.

Apple created its interfaces with large teams — the iPhone team was led by Jonathan Ive – and the winner of this contest could make more than Ive ever dreamed.

There is no contradiction between the ideals of open source and the idea of big financial rewards. Those who benefit from the open source model are now large enough to offer such rewards.

So who would host the show? Howie Mandel? Peter Gabriel? Or how about someone even higher-profile, like Bill Gates?