Developers of Trillr, a microblogging project similar to Twitter, announced this week that its source code is now available to anyone who wants it. The idea for Trillr was conceived in 2007 as a peer group experiment among team members who wanted to learn more about Python and Django, and was created as an enterprise tool with enhanced features like group discussion and a user directory.

Trillr project member Stefan Aust admits the code base is "kind of crappy" as it stands now, but that's to be expected since it was part of a learning process. He says that, looking back, he would have done some things differently but notes, "perfect source code does not create communities. Our source code can."

The KDE project has announced the date and some detail regarding its first annual Camp KDE event. This developer conference was conceived at the KDE 4 Release Event that took place earlier this year in Mountain View, California, and aims to get developers all over the world more involved in the KDE project.

For most people, the most important part of a software license is the end. That's because they're totally uninterested in the license itself; they are merely interested in scrolling past it, so that they can click on "OK" and install the software that they are running. For users of open-source software, however, licenses should be extremely important, because they determine what you may and may not do with a particular program. Open-source developers have long debated the merits of the GNU General Public License vs. the BSD License. As open-source software becomes mainstream, and is integrated into larger systems, these age-old arguments are less theoretical than ever, and should be understood not only by developers, but also by managers and executives of organizations working with open source. Van Lindberg's new book is an excellent place to start.