In my day job at Red Hat I see daily examples of open source best practices, be it at the architecture, infrastructure, or application level. I see how individuals focused on a specific problem are able to best solve that problem using the vast resources of open source (230 million source lines of code in 2005 and counting), and I see how diverse groups (sometimes within the same organization, sometimes between competitive or complementary vendors, and sometimes working outside the lines of a traditional customer/vendor relationship) create entirely new applications and insights by coordinating their work. One such example being http://www.usaspending.gov/, the fulfillment of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (Transparency Act) that required a single searchable website, accessible by the public for free. Open data, open standards, and open source facilitated this never-before-available cross-governmental collaboration. Another example which should be very familiar to all by now is that of the Linux Distribution like Fedora, where the whole really is more than the sum of its parts.

What has this got to do with Libre Graphics? Well, three of my favorite open source projects, Blender, The GIMP, and Inkscape, are all Libre Graphics projects, and they way they do what they do so well, the way that they all work together so well, and the way that they inspire artists and programmers to develop yet new forms and features of digital media represents a perfect microcosm of what I see happening in the enterprise every day. Or is it the other way around?

The Libre Graphics community is holding a conference in Poland this month, and they have put out an appeal to raise $20,000. As an open source developer excited about what this community has done, and as a creative class citizen committed to helping support the next generation of creative people and software, I have made my donation. I encourage you to support open source, support libre graphics, and make your donation, too.