Some of us will find some kind of alleged spare time on our hands over the next few weeks. Certainly, there's often some kind of break from "work" over the festive season. Traditionally free software developers have used such times for long coding sessions, get-togethers and "hack-fests".

To save money this holiday season, you could break out the construction paper and rubber cement and make something really, um, nice; or you could take a quick cruise on the Web, download a few free applications, put them on a thumb drive and really make someone's holiday. It's your choice. No pressure. Put down the safety scissors, please.

The Software Freedom Law Center last month released a guide to help businesses avoid compliance issues with the GPL and LGPL, "Practical Guide to GPL Compliance". The purpose of the guide is to help businesses avoid litigation over the GPL.

Many Linux users will be celebrating the Christmas holiday in five months, but it seems there's a holiday worth celebrating today for open-source ATI Linux users.

"Free Software Supporter is a newsletter run by the FSF (Free Software Foundation) and in it they have a section announcing a few software releases from the GNU project. However, they do not seem to provide any description of the projects aside from their name and version.

On the surface, Shuttleworth's suggestions are hard to dispute. However, as I analyze his keynote more closely, I wonder whether a couple of his suggestions may not be in the interests of free software, even though he clearly meant them that way. Still others seem to be more in the interests of particular sections of the community than those of free software as a whole.

If you're buying a new netbook for this holiday season, odds are that it will be loaded with Windows 7 Starter Edition. While many users will be happy with Microsoft's new OS, others might balk at the limitations. What are your alternatives?

Christmas is near! Matthias has some good advice. Here is his new list of Free Software related books 2009 which are also good for people who have not heard much about Free Software before.

There are plenty of charities in this world, many with noble causes. Some, probably more noble than the ones listed here. But if you’re like me, many (if not all) of these organizations and their causes have a special place in my heart. So here it is, the geek’s guide to giving this holiday season.