How is an untouchable superpower defeated? In many cases, it foolishly engages itself in an unwinnable war and simply consumes itself.

A little more than three months after he became leader of the Debian GNU/Linux project, Steve McIntyre is beginning to realise that it can be a little scary at times.

2008 is almost at its end and there’s one product/technology which has been so exceedingly helpful to me the past six months, that i thought i’d spend some time evangelizing it and giving it the completely unofficial title “My Technology Pick of the Year 2008″.

Does the idea of "advocacy" make you nervous? It does sound a bit scary, doesn't it, like those annoying door-to-door religious people. But it's not that way. If you're interested in helping people learn to speak Linux, here are a few easy, non-scary tips.

The annual Mobile World Congress (MWC) is always a highlight of the year for the mobile sector but this year's show was also a big one for open source software. Traditionally in a market dominated by proprietary operating systems there has been a significant shift towards open source software by mobile phone makers over the past year.

After an eventful if not turbulent last twelve months in the history of the Qt cross platform C++ GUI tool kit, the technology now resides within the corporate acquisition underbelly of Nokia’s many-chambered stomach. Within this same time frame, Nokia’s corporate manoeuvring has also seen Qt pushed to an LGPL distribution.

For the last few months, the Open Source Society has been facilitating a project called the Public Sector Remix. This involves a number of public sector agencies investigating use of a free software stack on the desktop and understanding the barriers preventing its more widespread adoption.

Draw the line in the sand! It's the showdown the tech world has feared: Microsoft's upstart Windows 7 versus Linux. We've seen plenty of volleys back and forth from both camps over the past few days, thanks to the beta launch of the Windows 7 operating system.

...the sector hasn't been a hotbed of innovation. Except for a few exceptions, most netbooks share pretty similar specs and are based on the same Intel Atom processor and Microsoft Windows XP operating system. But now, as the netbook sector enters its third year, new chips and operating systems hold the potential for massive change in the sector.