As we near in on the Inkscape 0.46 release, I've been increasingly focusing on the few remaining "critical" bugs. A lot of these are specific to the Windows port, which is a bit frustrating for those of us whose big hope in life is to *replace* Windows, not to support it.

When you are a free and open source software (FOSS) supporter, life often seems black and white. What you decided would say a great deal about your reasons for supporting FOSS.

Andy Updegrove writes an article providing an overview of the history of FOSS and its champions, the major philosophical differences that divide FOSS from OSS developers, the multiple licenses under which FOSS is made available, and the principle non-profit institutions that support and promote FOSS.

A FOSS Hut is an area dedicated to a specific focus area in FOSS, be it a project like KDE, community like SMC, user groups, special interest groups like mappers or start ups depending on FOSS.

Two law professors from UC Berkeley have come up with a novel idea to protect open source developers from patent bullies. They call it the Defensive Patent License. They hope the DPL can address the objections FOSS developers have with patents the way the GPL addressed them for copyright.

Can you believe it? Given Microsoft's history of antagonism, It's hard to believe anyone - let alone the Linux Foundation - would call on the FOSS community to respect Microsoft. No, if Microsoft wants respect, they should get it the 'old-fashioned' way - by earning it.

Recent interest towards FOSS from the Russian government has boosted commercial activity in this field. No longer than a year ago there was no single large company that would say it is capable of doing FOSS system integration projects. Now there are three, and the number will probably grow.

After having a meeting with a medium sized business owner about his need for a website it became painfully clear to me that "we" as the FOSS "community" need to do a much better job at making what it is we are offering more visible. We need something that communicates what FOSS is and what benefits there are for using FOSS applications.

Am I asking for too much here to want an equally easy install experience on Linux for FOSS software as I enjoy on Windows? If Linux is ever to gain any sort of real market share in the desktop market I feel this is some thing that must happen. But maybe I am wrong.