"Richard Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement, and the status and history of the GNU operating system, which in combination with the kernel Linux is now used by tens of millions of users world-wide..."

The topic around which the most discussion encircled was open source, and boy were there divergent views among the week’s ensemble. MBW regulars Scott Bourne and Andy Ihnatko took allegiance to cutthroat capitalism, while host Leo Laporte and the reigning jokester Merlin Mann took too trumpeting openness everywhere and hippie love for all.

But the UAV-as-weapon concern is persistent, and many people have asked whether we, by making the technology available and easy to use, might be inadvertently be helping our enemies.

"A working group has been set up in January 7th, 2002 by APRIL and FSF France. The original idea is from Pierre Jarillon (ABUL president). The objective is to have Free Software classified as an intangible world cultural heritage by the UNESCO

When listening to others talk about GNU/Linux it always strikes me as odd the argument that is used. That the Linux kernel was made usable by the marriage of the GNU tool set to it so therefor it should be called GNU/Linux as it is a blending of the two and Linux is only the kernel. On the face of it this argument makes sense ... if one doesn't think about it too deeply.

"I think you've made an astute prediction. Above all, the Free Software model is an extraordinarily powerful and enabling one, and for that reason it really doesn't matter, as long as public licencing is tight, who buys whom. Richard Stallman is a true visionary in this regard. Use it, but don't hog it..."

In response to some of the comments I received on a previous article, and to show that while I don’t use Ubuntu, I do support it, here are six reasons everyone should at least try Ubuntu.