The E-Commerce Times posted an interview with Jim Zemlin yesterday. Not surprisingly, he was very optimistic about the future of Linux, but his argument about cloud computing was particularly interesting.

He's a technologist, venture capitalist, social experimenter, philanthropist, and Russian-trained space traveler. Oh, and Mark Shuttleworth originated the world's fastest-growing Linux distribution, Ubuntu.

"Popularity of a language at the end of the day, comes down to the passion of the user community. A passionate and vibrant community helps language adoption and help increase its popularity. We wanted to talk to a select few experts, people who are experts in the language and ask their opinion. This is Part 1..."

Like many gearheads, I've owned a lot of portable computers over the years -- and I've wanted to replace every last one with a smaller, sleeker upgrade, from the "luggable" Apple IIc onward. But most of those upgrades have left me disappointed: with the lack of software; with cheap, hard-to-use interfaces; and with "optional" add-ons that were in fact very much necessary to make the machine useful. And then the Asus Eee came around, leaving a trail of effusive reviews and eager buyers. I started to feel the same old hope

"Transcript of Richard Stallman's Speech, 28 Oct 2002, at the International Lisp Conference"

Students in the technology club at Gov. Thomas Johnson Middle School opened their Christmas workshop a few weeks ago. Instead of toys and games, they stocked up on donated computers. Then, they rolled up their sleeves, and armed with new software and cleaning supplies, set off to refurbish and turn the computers into functional and much-needed presents for needy families in the area.

"...Ogg is professional-grade media format. Ogg Vorbis encodes audio and Ogg Theora encodes video. [...] The companies that control the software design it to restrict the users and spy on them. If you choose Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora, you can listen to audio and stream video using many different media players, including free software that respects your freedom..."

This Christmas I decided to give a few gifts to people in the open source community. I'm making donations to the maintainers of some of my favorite and most widely used software projects. They've earned some payback!