Does Microsoft fear Linux? Should it fear Linux? Does it fear Linux only in certain sectors, like Web servers, and not others, like the desktop? What exactly does “fear” mean here? Why do I still watch Lost? All important questions that deserve highly developed answers.

With the recent rise in popularity of the Ruby programming language (largely driven by the excellent but not perfect web framework called Rails), I’ve noticed a little fear in the air … fear on the part of some people in the PHP community.

"The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) supports Free Software so that every citizen can play an independent, active and responsible part in our information society. However, censorship of content, violations of the principle of 'Net Neutrality' and increasing online surveillance do not fit with these goals.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) supports Free Software so that every citizen can play an independent, active and responsible part in our information society. However, censorship of content, violations of the principle of 'Net Neutrality' and increasing online surveillance do not fit with these goals.

In some countries' governments, the use of Linux is often viewed as a cultural thing. Linux is closely aligned with the concept that software should be free. "In Europe, governments take open source very seriously. They have a fear of being locked into one vendor," said Paul Smith, vice president of government sales operations for Red Hat. "Linux gives governments leverage against the fear of being controlled."

Keeping information safe and away from eyes that shouldn’t see it can be pretty important. Here in the UK we’ve had several instances where the government has lost personal information. Since that information wasn’t encrypted, it could be in anyone’s hands by now.

The federal government has censored approximately 90 per cent of a secret document outlining its controversial plans to snoop on Australians' web surfing, obtained under freedom of information (FoI) laws, out of fear the document could cause "premature unnecessary debate".

Novell Threat Assessment Tool is marketed through fear; other small bits from the news

Yesterday I took part in an interesting event organised by BT called "Accelerating Enterprise adoption of Open Source Software" (disclaimer: filthy lucre was involved.) One topic that elicited much comment was why the public sector has singularly failed to deploy open source.