Earlier today Convio announced that they will acquire GetActive. I wont bother speculating too much on what this does to Open API's et al. I suspect the two orgs will be quite busy munging two large closed systems into an even larger closed system (speaking a bit from experience here!)

Mark Shuttleworth from Ubuntu recently had an article titled Keeping it Free. This article to a large extent summarizes what we at CiviCRM think and feel. From his blog entry a couple of paragraphs that really put things in context for us (and hopefully for you):

With Ubuntu, our vision is to make the very best of free software freely available, globally. To the extent we make short-term compromises, for drivers or firmware along the way, we see those as bugs, and ones that will be closed over time.

The dream for me is to be able to keep free software free of charge for the people who want it on those terms. To have people sharing the same high quality base and innovating on top of it - from Beijing to Buenos Aires - will create something that we’ve never had before, which is a completely level software playing field for every young aspiring IT practitioner, and every aspiring entrepreneur.

We have made pretty good progress and are well on our way to having a completely free open stack for managing non profits, membership and advocacy groups. The ecosystem is building and expanding quite nicely and we all should step up and continue playing a vital role to make this a reality.