As more noise in favor of GNU/Linux is heard, some people might feel tempted to replace their solid, green-red-blue-and-yellow Windows system with an unknown, shady, black-and-white Linux penguin. Some of these users, thinking they are about to enter the Promised Land, fail to fully consider the disastrous consequences that abandoning the firm, old Windows tradition may cause.

I have been a Linux user for over 10 years… until now. Recently I purchased a MacBook Pro. In the course of using it, I’ve come across a number of features of Linux and the KDE desktop that I greatly miss.

The part that I kind of object to is in the press release, of all things. It’s the opening line of the company profile: Ksplice is an enterprise software company making reboots a thing of the past. Please, lets be honest. Reboots are inevitable.

As a matter of fact, what IS the right market for Linux? The mythical Average User? No way. The average user wants a computer that performs the tasks set for it. Those people are in the market for a computer, a real, physical machine, a tangible object with a keyboard (real or imaged), a mouse (or trackpad/trackball/touchscreen), and a display screen.

For most of my formative years, I was primarily interested in building stuff as a personal hobby. Back then, when I first learned about Open Source, I was skeptical for one primary reason: financial (I need money ergo I need a job/gig). This reason is no longer a concern due to the brave souls that made open source software lucrative for businesses to build on.

Last week's move by Oracle to sue Google over Java use in the Android open source mobile operating system, may well end up having an impact that effects far more that just Android. And that has some key stakeholders in the open source community concerned.

As a Canadian, I'm always irked by airy statements by Americans that they won World War II. With all respect, I feel much the same way about the recent interview on Wired.com with Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation.

Here are just some among many takes on a talk about software patents and the Bilski case, courtesy of Professor Eben Moglen
Paula Rooney: Moglen: Bilski decision set back patent reform for more than a decade