Anne Zelenka recently predicted that software businesses will move from the extreme 'closed' and 'open' licensing models toward the center, what she refers to as 'clopen', or hybrid closed and open licensing models. I think she's missing something.

The Digital Milenium Copyright Act (DMCA) was adapted in most of the countries under the pressure of the majors and the distributors of music. Even if everybody could easily have an access to the Culture in all its variety, laws and technical restrictions make it impossible. Recently, the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) proposed a licence fee for an unrestricted access to music. At the same time, a mission for the French government was detailing the best approach to prevent and dissuade Internet users from illegally downloading music. Isn't the SAC's proposal applicable to France/your country?

Either there really is no "average" computer user, or "Mrs. D" is just not your "average" average user.

The appearance in the past year of so-called "completely libre" distributions such as gNewSense and Gobuntu, especially against the backdrop of existing distributions, like BLAG, Dyne:bolic, Ututo and others, might seem to point to an increased interest in software freedom. Should we be looking for the "rise of the completely libre distros", or is there something more subtle that we should notice?

Both Gobuntu and gNewSense fulfill the desires of the most exigent users when it is about respecting their freedoms. Almost identical at the software level, these two distributions differ in the relation they maintain with Ubuntu at the project level.

It's one thing to make a computer easy to use, but if you're going to do so, you must also make it secure. If you're not going to develop a secure OS, then at least give more thought to your emphasis on "Ease of Use".

Beagle has had its 15 minutes of fame. Now Tracker offers Beagle's capabilities and more. And it's faster, too.

You know, I've never found any real use for a shell script. Recently, I found an actual reason to write one for moving and converting audio files using a few less keystrokes.

I think the Free Software community ought to share in celebrating with Microsoft their wondrous success in selling 88 million copies of Windows Vista... albeit from a different perspective.

This past Summer, the news broke that the KDE project has plans to re-merge KHTML and Webkit. It appears the KHTML team is not going gently into that good night. (Updated 12:23 on Fri 26-Oct-07)

When the idea of sharing software comes up, people frequently break out in debates over Capitalism vs. Communism. It doesn't take long before someone starts equating - derisively, no less - sharing software with Communism. But since when did the Communists corner the market on sharing?

In the wee hours of the morning, while I was sleeping soundly, all snuggled up next to my wife...

Dvorak recently claimed that the Free Software Foundation spearheads the non-commercial use group that believes "nobody should ever make any money selling or using software." Boy, did he ever miss the boat. But the fact is that some people in the community seem to believe exactly that.

For some time now, Microsoft has been accusing the FOSS community of violating its patents. FOSS journalists have been calling their bluff for about as long. And now the patent armageddon game is on. And we could have prevented this all along.

After reading an InformationWeek article about Steve Ballmer suggesting, yet again, that GNU/Linux users - or at least the Red Hat users - owe Microsoft money for violating patents he, yet again, refuses to disclose. But Ballmer is missing something - or maybe I am.

The Amarok team is giving away an iAudio player. Kudos to them, but also to Cowon, a company that has boldly proclaimed support for GNU/Linux for some time now.

PostgreSQL is not the first project to launch a live CD, but the concept is one many projects should seriously consider adopting as a marketing tool.

I ran across a business website that refers to Amanda and Bacula as freeware. While I realize the average user may not recognize the difference, those of us who know better should distinguish clearly between the terms freeware and Free Software.

Saturday night, as I was leaving the Ohio LinuxFest after party, One of the organizers shared with me her aphrensions about the value of the event, and how the community resoundingly put those apprehensions to rest.

Whew! What a weekend it was at the Ohio LinuxFest in Columbus, Ohio! Between the free (but not Free) beer, having to choose between apparently popular sessions, and the wide variety of booths, the biggest problem was choosing which fun to have.