"I'm a bit of a rebel," Benjamin Mako Hill says, "with rather too many causes." Best known for his many roles in Debian, Hill is also a member of the Ubuntu Community Council, an advisor to One Laptop Per Child, a director of Software Freedom International, and the originator of several free software projects -- to say nothing of an active voice for the Free Culture Movement, and the occasional or

"Microsoft sought to avoid tangling itself up in the GPL license when it struck a deal with Novell. Rather than pay Novell, it agreed to hand out SUSE Linux coupons to consumers. It stayed at arms length from distributing the code… But did Microsoft circumvent the trap of GPLv2 by stepping into the snare of GPLv3?"

"...free software license requirements to release source code are all triggered by the act of distribution, and that web applications, which are not actually "distributed," are therefore not bound by these licenses....In other words, software delivered as service is now officially not covered by the GPL..."

Dell Ubuntu Linux buyers were recently outraged when a price comparison between identical Inspiron 1420 laptops showed that instead of the Ubuntu system being cheaper, it actually ended up costing $225 more than the same laptop with Vista Home Basic Edition.

One of the first things that confounds new users is that GNU/Linux is not a single operating system. Instead, it's the general name for hundreds of closely related operating systems -- distributions or distros, as they are usually called. All the distros share the Linux kernel and include many of the same utilities and programs, but differ in purposes and the resulting customizations.

ovell and SCO have filed a Stipulation Re: Pretrial Schedule [PDF] listing dates for the usual pretrial activities, such as for any motions in limine and for filing proposed jury instructions. Those are what each party hopes the judge will tell the jury, but he doesn't have to. The trial is set for September 17, so those of you who thought it would never happen need to synchronize your watches.

After decades of GUI development and inspiration from Google and other search engines, Mozilla suggests the command line is again part of the interface discussion.

Data centers demand cooler-running Linux boxes, and several projects are starting to deliver.