At the heart of Ubuntu’s ethos is a belief in showcasing free software and free culture.

Above is the winning image for the last Free Culture Showcase. To see the other past winners, check out this page: Previous Free Culture Winners.

Good luck to all the participants and be sure to check out the Free Culture Showcase website when the winners are announced!

The winning audio entry was by Jean Francois Marais (aka: MoShang) for his song “Invocation.” Invocation is from his Stone Bell EP.

Taking the video category is Robbie Ferguson for his video “Spirit of Ubuntu” (ogg video). Robbie hosts the Category 5 Technology TV show which is a live question and answer style show. His entry is a discussion of the Ubuntu community and what it means.

The winning image is a photograph by William J McKee Jr titled “Canadian Clouds” that was taken soon after crossing the boarder into Canada from New York State.

Amazing works from all 3 winners (for more information on the winners, see the official announcement), and the group of submissions (still available on the submission site, but only temporarily) was of great quality!

Be sure to remember that this contest will happen for each new Ubuntu release, which is every 6 months. So, get those submissions ready for the Free Culture Showcase for Ubuntu 9.10 released in October of this year!

The book covers a wide range of topics designed to build strong community. This includes the structure and social economy behind community, building effective and easy to use infrastructure, setting up community processes, creating buzz and excitement, governance, conflict resolution, scalability and more.

The book won’t just be for people interested in Open Source communities, but instead the principles and concepts can be applied to any community: political campaigns, student groups, or even neighborhood crime watches.

When released the book will be available in print from your favorite supplier of O’Reilly books and will also be available online under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. Jono is a believer in Creative Commons licensing as can be seen from his music project Severed Fifth and the use of CC licenses for the Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase. Adding this book to his repertoire of CC-licensed content shows just how far one person can go when embracing the ideals of Free Culture.

The winners of the competition are given more than just bragging rights as well. As Jono Bacon, Community Manager for Ubuntu, has put it in his announcement, “with each development cycle we present the opportunity for any Free Culture artist to put their work in front of millions of Ubuntu users around the world.” That is millions of new eyeballs and ears to experience your creative work. The deadline for submissions is February 6th, 2009 so get to work on your submission now!

Also, this time around the competition is not limited to only music and video as they have added the Image category to the mix. The image can be any type of photography or computer generated still art.

All submissions for the Showcase will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. The choice of license shows Ubuntu’s commitment to the ethos of Free Software and Free Culture. The Attribution-ShareAlike license is Approved for Free Cultural Work license and also the same license that Wikipedia is considering transitioning to in the future. This is a really great choice on behalf of Ubuntu to use the BY-SA license and help build the commons of free as in freedom material.

Congratulations to both Andrés Vidau and Andrew Higginson! Their winning submissions will be on over a million Ubuntu users’ desktops!

Andrés won the audio division with the song “Patas de Trapo” which you can download here. From the Ubuntu Fridge News Announcement, “Patas de Trapo is a track that was born in a one-track side project, and in collaboration with guitar player Mauricio Barron, current member of indie rock band A Colores.”

Andrew Higginson won the video division with “Stop Motion Ubuntu” that you can download here. This winning submission is Andrew’s first use of motion video as medium instead of still images.

Go check out all the submissions at the FreeCulture Showcase website. And remember, Ubuntu will be doing this again for the next release so start thinking of what your entry will be.