Monday we requested questions for Tim O'Reilly, of O'Reilly & Associates. Tim obviously put a lot of time into coming up with thoughtful answers, which we have published below. We've also invited Tim to join in the discussion here if he can find time, but please don't get upset if he can't. "Busy" is an understatement for this man!

Tim O'Reilly is, of course, the founder and guiding light of O'Reilly & Associates, which publishes stacks of books about programming in general and Open Source programming in particular, along with authoritative Linux manuals and a whole bunch of other stuff. Want to become an O'Reilly author? Ask Tim how. Or ask him anything else. Moderators will select the 10 - 15 questions we forward on Tuesday. Answers will appear Friday, and we cordially invite Tim to join the discussion Friday (if he has time) and add more comments or respond to any questions he found interesting but weren't moderated high enough to make the "first cut."

Monday we asked you to post questions for Alan Cox. We got so many good ones that only those moderated up to five were sent to him! Alan's answers are as great as you'd expect from one of the world's greatest kernel hackers. Read the full Q&A session below.

If you've been using Linux or reading Slashdot for more than a few months, we don't need to tell you about Alan Cox. (If you are new to Linux and/or Slashdot you can learn more about him here.) Anyway, this is your chance to ask Alan anything you want. Post your question(s) below. Moderators will choose the most interesting ones. Answers will appear Friday. Please try to ask only one question per post. Thanks.

Monday we got lots of questions (and rude comments) for Abe Ingersoll, the self-described "punk hacker kid" who was on MTV's Road Rules last year. Today, well after the agreed-upon (Thursday evening) deadline, we got his answers, which he apparently ran by "his editor" before he finally sent them to us - in Word .doc format. Mmmm. The full Q&A session appears below.

When the producers of the MTV show Road Rules asked 18-year-old Abe Ingersoll to describe his job, he wrote, "Im a full time systems analyst (a.k.a. "punk hacker kid") for an Internet connectivity company thats run by a bunch of old Berkley hippies." Last month Salon did a feature story about how Abe's hacking (and cracking) skills helped him get on the show and later helped him get close to one of the female cast members. Want to be a TV star? Ask Abe how he did it. Or ask him anything else. Post your questions below. Slashdot Moderators (you know who you are) will choose the most interesting ones. Abe's answers will appear Friday.

Monday a whole bunch of people had questions for Mandrake, one of the heavies behind Enlightenment. Slashdot Moderators picked the best ones. We forwarded them, unedited, to Mandrake on Tuesday. His (excellent) answers appear below.

Jonah Seiger and Shabbir Safdar own Mindshare Internet Campaigns, a Washington DC consulting firm that specializes in online political campaigning. Jonah and Shabbir are geeks who originally got into political activism by working to defeat political attempts to muzzle free expression on the Internet. Now they've turned pro -- very successfully -- but they're still avid Slashdot readers, and they're happy to answer questions about how the Internet is gaining acceptance as a political tool, and how you can use it to further your favorite cause or candidate. Please post your questions as comments below. Slashdot moderators and assorted dancing hamsters will pick 10 or 12 of them to forward. Answers will be posted Friday.

We got a bunch of questions for Illiad (of User Friendly fame) Monday, let the Moderators (you know who you are) decide which of them were worthy, and sent the chosen ones off to the wilds of British Columbia. Here are Illiad's answers...

You've probably read Illiad's User Friendly cartoons more than a few times. But who is Illiad? How did the strip develop? Why would anyone bother to spend so much time drawing a comic strip so geek-oriented that it'll never be as popular as, say, Family Circus or Mary Worth? Hey, don't ask me. Ask Illiad. Please post your questions below. The usual horde of Slashdot moderators and semi-trained mammals will pick 10 or 12 and forward them to Illiad. Answers will appear Friday.

We sent a stack of questions to Bruce Perens earler this week, and here are the answers. But before you start reading what Bruce has to say and taking it as gospel, he has a reminder for you: "I have to make the disclaimer that I am not attempting to practice law. The advice I give is to help you formulate strategies for participatation in the free software community, you may still need to consult an attorney regarding how you implement those strategies."

Bruce Perens is one of the mainstays of Linux and the Open Source movement, but he has never gotten as much publicity as Linus Torvalds, Richard M. Stallman or Eric S. Raymond. His latest project is TECHNOCRAT.NET. He sent in a few notes (hit "Read More" to see them) about what's happening on the Open Source licensing front, an area in which he is one of the World's Leading Experts(tm). Bruce will happily answer questions about Open Source and related software licensing issues. Instead of posting your questions here, please send them to questions@slashdot.org. We'll choose the 10 or 12 best ones, forward them to Bruce, and post the answers in a day or two.