Firefox is a great browser. However, it's a tad on the bloated side (even though the new version are definitely better!). Also, Firefox is focused on cross-platform compatibility. That's great, but so ...
In my last article I talked about how interest leads people to program. Then life rose up behind me like a giant Doberman pincer and bit me on my backside; so, I didn't think of programming for over f ...
Terry Hancock seemed to raise a few hackles when he presented case recently that "copyleft has no impact on project activity?!)". I'm not certain why, because it seemed he was just asking a question r ...
The gender inequality among developers and supporters of free software is stunning. Less than 2% of us are women, according to studies conducted for the European Commission. Why? The evidence says we' ...
Amarok sure inspires a lot of KDE-envy for Gnome users. Unfortunately, it doesn't fit in well in Gnome: it's written for a different desktop environment, uses a whole different toolkit, and requires a ...
You know a science story is big when an experiment gets first or second billing on the main evening news--and it's not even a slow news day. The [Large Hadron Collider]( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L ...
Recently, I collected some data from Sourceforge, hoping to find evidence for the importance of copyleft. But I found something surprising: although there's plenty of evidence that many developers _be ...
I was surprised and delighted to find this video presentation by one of my favorite performers, Stephen Fry, called "Happy Birthday to GNU", on the GNU project homepage. Posted on September 1st, in ho ...
Richard Stallman wants to popularise the term GNU/Linux instead of using the currently popular term Linux. He correctly states that the term Linux, besides being thoroughly inaccurate, totally fails t ...
Today I want to talk about free and open source software in connection with the `them` and `us` feeling that I believe is widely felt all over the world. Initially you might think that these two topic ...
Most of the assumptions on which our present economic system is based are based on nothing much better than "conventional wisdom": which is a fancy way of saying "it just sounds plausible". Sometimes ...
After Microsoft killed Netscape, there was no serious competitor to Internet Explorer in the browser wars. For years, Microsoft lorded its dominance of the web browser market. Then along came Firefox, ...
By rights, copyright really shouldn't apply to binary executables, because they are purely "functional" (not "expressive") works. The decision to extend copyright to binaries was an economically-motiv ...
Senator Barack Obama and the Democractic National Convention Committee, In his campaign speeches, Senator Obama often evokes images of citizen participation in the governmental process. He proclaims t ...
For a time, GNU/Linux music library tools seemed to be, well, non-existent. Sure, XMMS was an awesome media player. But if you wanted to catalog your music, you were out of luck. Apple users had iTune ...
Garry Saddington is ICT co-ordinator at Skegness Grammar School. It is a specialist sports college and a specialist maths and computing college with nearly 800 pupils, and has a boarding provision for ...
I’m not sure why it bothers me: I use the word "Free" when I’m talking about "Free Software", and "Open" when I mean "Open source". I’m very particular about my words, that way. But that's just me. I ...
I am Drigg's founder and developer. Drigg and Pligg are pieces of software that will allow you to create Digg-like sites. People sometimes ask me if they should pick Drigg or Pligg. When it happens, I ...
Everyone knows about the infamous internet wars. Ranging from operating systems to text editors to code indentation style, these wars have wreaked havoc on the web for years. The topics range from ser ...