A lot of bandwidth has been wasted arguing over the lack of usability in open-source software/free software (henceforth “OSS”). The debate continues at this moment on blogs, forums, and Slashdot comment threads.

"...Free software is a political movement that is not only about producing software that’s source code is ‘open’, but it’s vision is a free society & free software. The term OSS gives too much emphasis to the source code being available, and not enough emphasis to freedom.

"...Steve Yegge’s Javascript editing mode for Emacs, js2-mode, really takes this kind of 'ambient usefulness' to the next level. That’s because it doesn’t just use colors and styles to indicate syntax, but to indicate semantics as well..." -- http://code.google.com/p/js2-mode/

"It looks like I missed an interesting discussion on humane markup langages last week. Obviously I use emacs to write my blog posts with muse and htmlize. A tiny bit of Juan wrap makes it a pleasure. I wouldn’t write at all if I had to use raw HTML (although maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I used nxml-mode)..."

While the thought of Linux actually powering the massive financial exchange computer systems around the world would have been absurd just a couple of years ago, there is a growing feeling that the open source computer operating system is ready to make the jump. We are not talking about speculation, we are talking about solid performance figures which suggest it is possible. So what next?

This time of year, I make my rounds with the OEMs and get to chat with a number of executives. Several things have floated to the top, but the one I’d like to chat about right now is the comment that Linux demand and interest in open source in general has dropped off sharply.

It seems Apple is not the entity fighting for a DRM-less world we thought they were and Nokia isn’t such a great patron for open source software either. For those who haven’t heard the news, lobbying by both companies have caused the W3C to strike a provision in a HTML5 draft which would make OGG Vorbis and Theora a standard media format on the web.

As an emerging sci-fi novelist (see my books here), I've actually been taking a vested interest in Ebooks of late. Of course, I've also been taking interest in them from the perspective that they've become yet another battleground in the widening war of media freedom, an important theater in the much larger war of user freedom.

OPEN source software can reduce costs and improve security dramatically, yet many people are a bit apprehensive about getting their feet wet. Typical of this concern, reader John Cohon wrote in with a number of questions about shifting to open source. To the extent that my answers to him might help other companies or individuals make the shift, I’m running them here.