Reader Tomi Nousiainen sent me this sunny and relaxed greeting for Midsummer, which he allowed me to share with all of you.

Sun has been saying it for more than a year now, but we wanted action, not words. Then they open sourced Solaris, but we were not interested in that, we only wanted Java. Then last week it happened...

I'm glad that somebody has already asked how he could contribute to the collaborative version of Open Life. We came to the conclusion that the collaborative edition will be a completely new book, written in collaboration by all of us who want to be a part of it. The new book will be called "Open Life 2.0" as a working title. The "old book" will be referred to as "Open Life 1.0"

If you've had a look at the fine print you'll already know, the book cover was made using Creative Commons licensed images from the Internet. It is in itself supposed to be a testimony of how you can publish books and other things as part of an Open Source continuum. I wanted to make a nice cover image and I wanted to find and use only images licensed under suitably licensed pictures. Even if I could have used some clipart too, in this case I did not want to do that out of pure principle. I wanted everything in the book to be Open Source.

I'm back home, after flying around Europe last week and ending up in Vaasa on Friday to attend the Open Source seminar arranged by the Vaasa Applied Sciences University and their EU funded Business in Open Source program.

When rock stars publish a new record, they go on a tour and have concerts around the world. Publishing a book is kind of the same. You get invited to talk in various Open Source events. This Friday (October 6th) I'll be in Vaasa for the EU sponsored Business In Open Source seminar.

I noticed yesterday that Open Life has now showed up also at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and presumable available at every other book store in the world as well. So now it's really published!

I just checked at Lulu.com and it seems I've now sold my first couple of books. Yippiee! I immediately also noticed a small drawback. With the Finnish book I'd receive the orders into my personal mailbox, and write a personal thank you note to the buyer. Now I have no idea who it is that is buying the book. Of course, that's the inevitable price of automation.