"Greenpeace is in search of an experienced, well-rounded systems admin for its Washington, DC office. This is a rare opportunity for an environmentally aware GNU/Linux hacker..."

"Michael Olson, who is the maintainer of a bunch of free software projects, is now the maintainer, release manager and chief executive officer of Emms..." -- http://mwolson.org/projects/

As some open source developers seem to be unable to accept a mere reporting of a bug, this got me a reason for a long summary.

"Add this to your diaries. Richard Stallman will be talking about free software in Manchester on 1st of May. The talk has been organised in association with the Manchester branches of the BCS and IET. Details from announcements are..."

"...Dear Mr. La Camera and Dr. Brown, The WBUR group has become a leader in public broadcasting by producing award-winning radio programs, syndicating National Public Radio and other programming on FM and AM radio stations, and by broadcasting on the World Wide Web at wbur.org.

The release of Linux XP 2008 has highlighted an interesting opportunity for the open source code which might see it eventually crack the mass market after a number of false starts. Linux XP 2008 offers an interesting backdrop to Windows XP and gives users the opportunity to use what is fast being recognised as a more flexible and user friendly system. But can it work in the long term?

See the pattern? It might not be entirely evident from the headlines, but if you read the articles, it will become immediately clear: these positive statements about Linux and negative statements about Windows are courtesy of analysts.

One persistent misfeature of open source development is thoughtless mimicry, copying the behaviors of other projects without considering if they work or if there are better options under the current circumstances. At best, these practices are conventional wisdom, things that everybody believes even if nobody really remembers why. At worst, they're lies we tell ourselves.