This chapter started out as a catalog of reusable solutions--canned macros, if you will. But as I finished chapter after chapter preceeding this one, it became clear to me that I really needed to broa ...
In this book, I've taken you on a whirlwind tour of the main features of Autoconf, Automake and Libtool. I believe I've explained them in a manner that was not only simple to digest, but also to retai ...
Think, for a moment, about what the free software community looks like from the external gaze. "Bloody Communists" - I've never actually had a businessman say this to me when I've been explaining free ...
FOSDEM - a geek trip to Brussels. Going abroad to experience different cultures. Or at least, a chance to eat chips, suffer rain, and watch American TV in a different country.
Since last November, I've been missing from these pages because I've been spending the Australian summer out in the Back of Beyond. You can get wireless broadband operating out here, but I couldn't af ...
I recently re-read the article how to hate free software in 3 easy steps by Steven Goodwin. I'm no programmer, but then I've also installed a few distributions myself. And frankly, I have trouble rela ...
Is it true that programmers enter a state comparable to deep meditation while they are at work? Some claim that they do, but how do we know what they mean by this? In order to understand, we first nee ...
On 28 February 2008, Elonex launched the Elonex ONE--the first sub-£100 laptop in the UK. Clearly competing against the much in-demand Asus EeePC [2], Elonex say they are aiming at the school-student ...
A new conventional wisdom began to spring up around free software, led in part by theorists like Eric Raymond, who were interested in the economics of free software production. Much of this thought ce ...
Free software has many benefits: you can get more secure software, faster updates, lots of tutorials and, definitely, a new way of making software and software that builds communities. From this, the ...
It used to be that you could safely assume a work was public domain unless there was a highly visible warning printed on it, containing both the copyright owner and the date of copyright (at least in ...
Microsoft Exchange is the name most organisations go for when thinking of sharing calendars, e-mail etc. However, there are free software alternatives--and of course you don't have to go for the obvio ...
Project Gutenberg, started in 1971, is the oldest part of the modern free culture movement. Wikipedia is a relative upstart, riding on the wave of success of free software, extending the idea to other ...
It has long been the case that proprietary software companies regularly engage in FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) tactics against their opponents. This particularly seems to apply to Microsoft's sta ...
Free software has much to offer non-profit organizations (NGOs). If you are reading this, you are probably a member or participant of an NGO, and I hope I can show you why free software and open stand ...
It's one of the more popular culture wars in the free software community: GUI versus CLI (graphics versus the command-line). Programmers, by selection, inclination, and long experience, understandably ...
Many people have complained about the lack of pre-integrated computers running GNU/Linux or the lack of fully free software drivers for important hardware. Ultimately though, it's up to you, the consu ...
Following on from my piece on whether OpenOffice.org can do the job I have remembered that OpenOffice.org 3.0 is due for release in September. So--with my comments on 2.3 in mind--let's see whether th ...
The word is finally out. It was just a suspicion about a month ago, but it was finally, sadly, confirmed. The OpenWengo project ceased to exist last November, and all the developers have been laid off ...