"If I've learned anything from Spread Firefox, BarCamp, coworking and the like, it's that propaganda needs to be free to be effective. In other words, you're not going to convince people of your way of thinking if you lock down what you have, especially if what you have is culture, a mindset or some other philosophical approach that helps people narrow down what constitutes right and wrong."
and
"On the one hand, there's uncertainty about how to build a "national identity"-slash-business on top of lots of user data (that, oh yeah, I thought was supposed to be "owned" by the creators), and on the other, a model of the web, that embraces all its failings, nuances and spaghetti code, but that, more than likely, will stand the test of time as a durable provider of the kind of liberty and agency and free choice that wins out time and again throughout history."

-Chris Messina, writing at factory city about open standardsm data portability, and market competition, in this case for data, protocols and so called "open" code.

The nicely forward thinking Knight Foundation has teamed up with the Drupal community to create a rolling series of funding opportunities. Grant forms and info are live at http://groups.drupal.org/knight-drupal-initiative; this is a great way to drive forward community platform development in the Drupal environment, IMHO.

From the website--What the goals are:
Drupal and the Knight Foundation agree that open source digital publishing can enable powerful agents of transformation in their communities.

Knight Foundation is working with the Drupal community on the Knight Drupal Initiative with the following goals in mind:

• To enable more people to enter the digital conversation by lowering the technical barriers to entry.
• To provide powerful tools for digital publication, free and open to all.
• To encourage people to improve their communities by supporting the free exchange of information and ideas.

Knight Foundation believes that five basics define transformational projects:

• Discovery of the facts.
• The vision to see what's possible.
• The courage to push for change.
• The know-how to get it done.
• The tenacity that gets results.

I would love to see folks like Chris Pirillo and Chris Messina apply for grants!

Here's Alex Polvi's  sweet one from the Vidooop identity contest--(and maybe a reason to take a break from life in the Valley, see if you can spot what I mean):

Steve Hodson's got a smart post up that presents the point of view that the Mashables, the TechCrunches, the RWWs, the GigaOms have become so big and so pervasive that individual tech bloggers have to either join the or fight for attention to be heard.

As someone who's been blogging since 2003, mostly as a part-time thing, and not as a means to make $$ from writing (though it's definitely helped my consulting), the concept that newer bloggers feel that they have to fight to have a voice seems interesting.  I'm not sure it's true, but I know that there are people who believe it's true, and their experience fighting to be heard is probably quite different than mine,

One thing I've started to see and wondered about are the people who seem to make informal agreements to promote one another, to informally create networks if you will. I don't know that I had ever heard of Corvida/She Geeks until Louis Gray started linking to her relentlessly, along with Steve Hodson and SarahinTampa and ParisLemon /MGSigler  (A quick look at Technorati links suggests that these folks are linking to one another at least 50% more than anyone else is linking to them.)

Interestingly, it turns out that all of these folks are part of a new blogging network called Grand Effect that aims to share ads and boost traffic.And clearly, though they don't seem to have sold any ads yet, the network effect works.  Coming off a week in Israel on the bus with Scoble, Craig Newmark and Sarah Lacy, it's interesting to see folks joining forces--while Scoble's certainly done his share of linking to the uncles, these other folks are more independent sorts; Sit would be fun to hear what Sarah, who's also a journalist, thinks about the fight to be heard .

So, the "real questions" are:
1. Do you have to form alliances to get traffic, beyond what the big sites throw out?
2. Whose rise in the states supports this idea--and whose doesn't?
3. Does it matter, aka, does this kind of recirculation push yet other voices down (and isn't that the law of continuous revolution, anyway?)

I'd really like to hear what you think..either in the comments or on your own site. (And let me just add these people I am talking about are voices I value, so this ain't throwing down no glove.)