Linus Torvald is European (born in Helsinki – Finland). He is the leader of the community who created the (quite) so-called « Linux ». To be brief, Linux is one of the Microsoft operating system alternative. The Linux killer application is in fact based in its (General Public) License which means « that its source code is freely-distributed and available to the general public » (linux.org). Linux is a demonstration that a community has the ability #01 to agregate worldwide crowd of top experts co-working because they are passionnated by a project #02 to develop state of the art business outcomes. Today many Information Technology standards are Open Source based : APACHE, PHP, MySQL, ... The governments of China and Vietnam have decided to allow their administration only to use Open Sources applications ! The world's largest Open Source software development website, SourceForge.net, identifies 90.000 projects and 950.000 members ! Just have a look to these applications such as SPIP, MAMBO, FreeMind, TikiWiki, NetVis (...) and discover that today, the OpenSource is enough mature to offer you productivity modules to design your own KM toolbox ! You ask about the support you may get from an application ? It is freely offered by the community around each project. You have some feed-back concerning one application ? Please feel free to offer your vision and lessons learned to the community each application belongs to ! For the developpers, as the code is open it can be modified and improved ! Be OPEN minded .. Use the following SOURCEs !

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Summary

#01 : Mind mapping
#02 : Personnal publishing – blogs
#03 : News agregator (RSS, RDF and ATOM formats)
#04 : Wiki
#05 : Instant messaging and conferencing
#06 : White board
#07 : Collaborative leaning system
#08 : Content management system
#09 : Knowledge base
#10 : Groupware
#11 : Resource scheduling
#12 : Business process management system
#13 : 'Recruiting' software
#14 : Project management
#15 : Domain or intranet search engine
#16 : Ontologies management
#17 : Social network analyse
#18 : Bookmarks library
#19 : Balanced scorecard
Further readings
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#01 : Mind mapping
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FreeMind
Mak

#02 : Personnal publishing – blogs
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TextPattern
Frassle

#03 : News agregator (RSS, RDF and ATOM formats)
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FeedReader
RSSOwl

#04 : Wiki
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MediaWiki
MoinMoin
TikiWiki
Xwiki

#05 : Instant messaging and conferencing
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AMSN
PSI
Gaim

#06 : White board
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Cocinella
Drawboard
Anka

#07 : Collaborative leaning system
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Interact
Learnloop
OpenUSS
Segue
Anaxagora
Lessonbuilder
Ganesha
Dokeos

#08 : Content management system
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SPIP
Plone
Mambo
Aplaws
kt-dms
Xoops

#09 : Knowledge base
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Owl
OpenIT
OpenCyc

#10 : Groupware
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eGroupware – Entreprise Collaboration
phpGroupeWare
Tutos
Group-Office
Lucane Groupware

#11 : Resource scheduling
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Meeting Room Booking System
phpScheduleIt

#12 : Business process management system
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xFloWs
OpenWFE
Twister
jBpm.org - java Business Process Management

#13 : 'Recruiting' software
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FlashRecruit
Orsee

#14 : Project management
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NetOffice
GanttProject
ZenTrack
TrackPlus
XPlanner

#15 : Domain or intranet search engine
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Mindmeld
XQEngine
Oxyus
The Search Engine Project
ht://dig
Strangesearch

#16 : Ontologies management
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KPontology
Nokia Semantic Web Server

#17 : Social network analyse
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Aroundme
Netvis

#18 : Bookmarks library
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phpLinks
Bookmark Manager

#19 : Balanced scorecard
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Bspg

Further readings
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opensource.org
The Cathedral and the Bazar Eric S. Raymond
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