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The Software Freedom Law Center's (SFLC) request for a re-examination of Blackboard's patent for elearning systems has been granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office. Another request for re-examination by Desire2Learn is also pending. Speaking for the SFLC, Richard Fontana expresses optimism that these requests will either overturn the patent claim or else narrow it to the point that it no longer poses a threat to free software learning systems.

Its products are free. Its work force is largely volunteer. Its meetings are open to anyone. It's a nonprofit. It may be the hottest tech company in America.

Part of the early received wisdom about open-source was that it couldn't last: why would people donate their time and expertise to creating something for no return?

This is Part 3 of a series that pits Microsoft's new Vista OS against Linux's fair-haired boy, Ubuntu. At the conclusion of Part 2, our fearless curmudgeon had just finished configuring his test system to dual-boot Vista Ultimate and SimplyMEPIS 6.01, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution with a KDE desktop.

In a message posted to the Linux kernel mailing list yesterday, kernel contributor Greg Koah-Hartman announced that kernel developers will be providing free Linux driver development services for companies. This service will help the Linux community create stronger relationships with hardware vendors while reducing the barriers that presently impede ubiquitous Linux hardware support.

The fact that OpenOffice.org Writer is more than a word processor is an open secret. Designed to write long documents, Writer is in many ways a document processor comparable to FrameMaker, suitable for designing books and dissertations while falling short of a complete desktop publishing solution. For this reason, it includes a number of tools for tweaking lines of text, including Tools> Language> Hyphenation and the tools for adjusting character width and letter space for individual characters. However, by far the least understood of these high-end tools is Writer's ability to adjust line-spacing.

Thanks to Fluendo, Linux and Solaris users on a variety of processor architectures can now purchase playback support for patent-encumbered audio and video formats. Similar support from free alternatives, whether they rely on copying Windows DLLs or use original code, all violate existing patent law. The mere existence of Fluendo's plugins needles a bevy of critics, but Fluendo is prepared to answer them all. And in an ironic twist, sales of these decoders for non-free formats are funding the development of free alternatives.

Last week, we learned some fun ways to mess with the minds of wireless freeloaders, and introduced ourselves to some methods for finding out who is on our networks. Today we're going to learn some different ways to kick unwanted visitors off networks, and how to see exactly who is lurking on our airwaves.

When you read source code, often you need to look for definitions of functions, classes, or other objects. Editors such as Emacs and Vim help you browse the code by supporting the concept of tags. You can think of tags as labels that can be jumped to.

MySQL is a database that is synonymous with ease-of-use, and most database-driven Web applications use it as their database of choice. Because of this, MySQL is used on many Web servers. While the MySQL command line tool is useful, unless you know all the ins and outs of SQL syntax, it can be time-consuming to get things done. It is for this reason that tools like phpMyAdmin have become so popular.

ActiveState Software Inc. has shipped Komodo IDE 4.0, the first unified workspace for end-to-end development of dynamic web applications.

I recently was contacted by a major Unix reseller. The company had a very simple question: with the writing on the wall for Unix growing bigger and bigger with every quarter, which Linux should they adopt?

Organisers of the recent World Social Forum, which runs parallel to the World Economic Forum, banned Microsoft software from the forum, labelling the Redmond giant an imperialist.

A call for participation was announced this week for "Ubuntu Live," billed by organizers as the first "official" conference dedicated to Ubuntu Linux. The event, set for July 22-24 in Portland, Ore., aims to give participants the knowledge needed to use Ubuntu to best advantage, organizers said.

With the stage set and the players in, the show has just got underway in New Delhi. LinuxAsia 2007 has been kicked off in style at the India Habitat Centre in the city. With a lot of 'Open' action in store, the three-day event, scheduled from 31 January to 2 February 2007, is where you are going to find the biggest of the names in the industry deliberating on the future course of action for the open source movement.

Since not all of the development for KDE 4 is in base technologies, this week features two of applications from the KDE-Edu team: Kalzium, a feature-filled chemistry reference tool, and KmPlot, a powerful equation graphing and visualization program. Read on for the details. These educational tools have received a lot of work for KDE 4. In particular, Kalzium and KmPlot developments are happening at an amazing rate.

The CSIR's Meraka institute is expected to become the new South African Linux Professional Institute affiliate now that the Shuttleworth Foundation has ended its relationship with the LPI.

The domain name system (DNS) maps human-understandable Web site addresses into numeric IP addresses. Launched in July 2006, OpenDNS adds a few free services on top of the traditional DNS to block phishing Web sites and auto-correct common misspelled URLs. And thanks to some clever traffic routing and load-balancing technology, OpenDNS can also deliver Web pages faster.

Project maintainer Ken VanDine on Jan. 28 announced the release of Foresight Linux 1.0, the first stable release of the rPath-based desktop Linux distribution after nearly two years of development. It sports a new 2.6.19.2 kernel and the GNOME desktop environment.

The X Window System is, in some sense, the kernel of our graphical desktop systems; it controls access to the hardware and ensures that applications play well together. So the capabilities provided by X matter, and that importance can only increase as free software developers work toward the creation of more complete and compelling desktop experiences. Keith Packard gave a couple of talks at linux.conf.au in Sydney on where X is going; your editor had no choice but to be there and listen.