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"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 organizer of such activities as last fall's iPod Liberation Event in Cambridge, Mass. Hill recently took on his largest challenge yet as the youngest director on the Free Software Foundation's board of directors.

Another move in the software patent game. IBM is offering a patent covenant to implementers of a bunch of IT standards, with the catch being that you lose all of the covenant protection if you sue over any patent that reads on any software that's also covered by the covenant.

Another thread discussed potentially merging the swap prefetch patch into the mainline Linux kernel. Con Kolivas started the thread saying "I fixed all bugs I could find and improved it as much as I could last kernel cycle. Put me and the users out of our misery and merge it now or delete it forever please." Replying to an off-list message, Andrew Morton asked users of the patch, "please provide us more details on your usage and testing of that code. Amount of memory, workload, observed results, etc?"

Five years after the debut of its popular open-source drawing program for children, New Breed Software announced the release of Tux Paint 0.9.17.

Amazon uses Linux. eBay uses Windows. But what OSs and webservers run Web 2.0? We tested 17 of our favorites and found out. The script is included to check for yourself. They all use Linux. Linux is pretty much it for Web 2.0 startups. If you’ve ever wondered why a site called VentureCake has so much Linux content, you now have your answer.

IBM announced today that they are simplifying access to their patent portfolio as it applies to open standards. "IBM's commitment not only applies to the distributors, developers or manufacturers that are implementing the specifications involved, but also extends to their users or customers. It is valid as long as adopters are not suing any party -- not just IBM -- over necessary patented technology needed to implement the standards."

The general corporate strategy of standardising the platform and hiring accordingly is an echo of that argument from the 70s. Organizations standardising on Red Hat Enterprise Server generally try, for example, to hire people with Red Hat Enterprise Server experience and then press the combination as the one size fits all solution for whatever Linux needs line managers may have. Take a close look, however, at the Linux staffing issue and you should see notice that the average tenure generally exceeds the average life of a distribution -meaning that when you hire Joe, he’s likely to be around longer than the particular Linux distribution you hire him to run.

Novell Inc. on June 18 released its first service pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. This service pack, also known as SP1, features significant enhancements in virtualization, high-performance computing, security, interoperability, and system management. LinuxQuestions.org has a nice collection of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop SP1 screenshots.

After a long wait, the first official Stable version of Elive, 1.0, has finally been released! This version is ready for the end-users and not just hard core testers. It is a more intuitive easy to use and more efficient system. It has better integration of the file-manager and the mime-types, a nice kernel especially for multimedia and big processes loads, a light weight foot print, much better compatibility with your (possible) Windows system/software, more hardware supported, better graphical recognition, and many more things.. LinuxQuestions.org has a nice collection of Elive Gem 1.0 SP1 screenshots.

Not too long ago, I subscribed to a Linux magazine for beginners called Tux. Fantastic magazine, but the last I heard they were "headed out," so to speak, due largely to a lack of funding. However, unlike bigger publishers, which include Linux Magazine, Tux was special because they were giving away the magazine in the PDF format. That's right, they provided a free copy of their magazine in hopes of generating enough revenue in ad sales alone. Unfortunately, it did not work out so well for them to that degree. This got me thinking, though - could it be that their advertising model was flawed?

The Meraka Institute and Linux Holdings will be co-hosting Linix Professional Institute exams on August 11. The exam will take place at the Linux Holdings premises in Pretoria. Linux Holdings recently launched South Africa's first full-time Linux academy. Candidates from all levels are welcome to attend.

A couple of weeks ago, the O'Reilly editors asked Is Microsoft Relevant in a Post-Rails World? Contrary to some reports, there are still desktop applications in the world besides a web browser--and there are plenty of desktop applications under serious development. Many of them are F/OSS. Of those, plenty have ties to existing projects to produce fully-free desktop software. They run on top of free Unixes, take advantage of free APIs and libraries, and interoperate well with other free software.

This just in: it's an Ubuntu future. Think I'm nuts? Take a cold, hard look around. Even though I'm a fan of other delightful distros like Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux, there are other honorable mentions, such as Fedora (a fine distro) and OpenSuSE. At the end of the day, however, Ubuntu has won the hearts of common users. And that is not my opinion, this is simply a matter of numbers.

NoMachine recently released version 3.0 of its remote desktop product line. NX 3.0 has some interesting advantages over similar products -- but also some pitfalls for inexperienced users. As a whole, I found NX 3.0 to be very capable software, and faster than VNC, which for a free solution is reason enough to earn a place on my network.

It has been a boast for around around 6 months now. OOXML defines spreadsheet formulas, and ODF doesn't. The Microsoft boosters have been parroting the party line for quite some time. But what you will not find is an examination of what OOXML actually specifies for spreadsheet formulas, or confirmation that it was done sufficiently. Maybe the assumption is that this would be a trivial task, documenting Excel's behavior? What could possibly go wrong? Let's find out.

Dell plans on expanding the reach of its factory-installed Linux PCs to include small and midsize businesses and Europe, Michael Dell, the company's founder and CEO, said at a July 10 event in New York. This will include a focus on SMBs as well as the European market. Dell, however, did not offer a specific time frame.

Today OpenLogic announced the general availability of OpenLogic Discovery, a free software tool that helps enterprises inventory the open source software installed on their computer systems. They are also announcing a free Open Source Inventory Analysis for up to 500 machines.

If you want an adaptable window manager that doesn't drain your resources, try Openbox. Its latest version, 3.4.2, released this month, has several visual improvements and dozens of new usable features.

I developed this "cliff notes" style document while working on my first Symfony project ThemBid.com. It will be useful for you to get started quickly with Symfony and serve as a cheat sheet while you are hacking.

The Air Mozilla video webcast will return on Wednesday 11th July when Mozilla Corporation CEO Mitchell Baker answers questions in a live interview. The broadcast will begin at 2:00pm Pacific Daylight Time (9:00pm UTC/GMT) and is scheduled to last one hour. Asa Dotzler, who will be hosting the segment, has posted some details about the relaunch of Air Mozilla. According to his post, Mitchell will talk about the state of the Mozilla project and answer questions from the audience.