Bernhard Reiter, co-founder of FSFE, talks about funding Free Software development and advocacy, the need for salaried campaigners, and the evolution of FSFE from its humble origins.

In the last twelve months, we have made more than 4000 commits, closed over 4000 bugs, released 6 new versions of Amarok, written a Quick Start Guide to Amarok, attended over 10 conferences and had a big developer sprint in Switzerland. All of this, thanks to your donations!

The free culture movement, which is of a whole with the free software movement, has made a lot of great progress but is still struggling to prove itself to be economically viable in the mainstream. I might even go so far as to say that a lack of a better funding system is the single biggest thing holding back many existing and many more prospective free culture projects.

One of the things I admire about the FLOSS community is the willingness to dig in and tackle problems facing a project, whether they're technical, structural (hosting, etc.), governance, licensing, and so on. But it would occasionally be a better idea to try to recruit expertise from the outside than to try to re-invent the wheel inside each project.

Linux Fund is pleased to announce Linux Fund Casino, an open source online gaming site that will launch immediately upon the impending repeal of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), the proceeds of which will benefit Linux Fund's mission to support open source software.

Can open source game development be funded? Fill in this survey and read the results later!

Obama receives money directly from Microsoft executives but not from their lobbyists

The One Laptop Per Child Foundation is now targeting deep-pocketed donors for its OLPC XO laptop. A new initiative launched by the group is actively looking for charitable foundations, not-for-profit organizations, and wealthy philanthropists to give the OLPC XO a boost.