People contribute to free software in many ways. Some write the stuff; some write *about* the stuff, spreading the word; and some actually spread open source directly by giving away systems to those who need them. We hear a lot about the stars of first group, and the second group make a lot of noise on their own. But too often we take the third group for granted.

One of the greatest Linux Advocates alive today, at least in my mind, has nearly worked himself to death. And no, I am not kidding. He came close to dying. this is submitted ONLY to let the community know how he is doing and to show you that his sense of humor is still intact. The community outreach has been tremendous so take this only as a report...nothing more. And Bless The HeliOS Project.

« Registration is now open for the GNU Hackers Meeting on 11-13 November in Gothenburg, Sweden. It is being held jointly with the FSCONS conference on 14-15 November. The meeting is intended for active GNU contributors and its theme is "the continued advancement of the GNU system"...

A couple of months ago, Free Software Magazine (and FSDaily.com) went through what you'd call a "rough patch" in terms of hosting: 3FN, which hosted FSM, was effectively shut down by the FTC in the United States. Many companies had their backup servers on 3FN's networks - and therefore lost everything. We were lucky enough to have a full backup over in Europe.

"...HAR (Hacking At Random) is an international technology and security conference, with a strong free software, freedom of information political leaning [...] The issues addressed by these talks are not just technical, they have political implications for how we live [...] But HAR2009 was not just about talks. It was also about meeting people, talking, exchanging ideas.

"...Free Software is really something to get excited about. Through the community created by GNU Generation, hopefully that excitement will persevere through the years to come. Unfortunately, it will take more than just a small little campaign to make this happen. It will take the cooperation of all Free Software users, developers, and advocates to really get the message across.

At the turn of this decade Miguel de Icaza was the unblemished hero of the free software movement and chief architect and co-creator, with Federica Mena, of the GNOME project, which had come into being as the free software response to KDE. Now de Icaza is regarded with suspicion because of his support for Mono. What happened to bring about this change?