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The gender inequality among developers and supporters of free software is stunning. Less than 2% of us are women, according to studies conducted for the European Commission. Why? The evidence says we’re driving them away. There are even some pretty good published guidelines on how not to drive them away. What’s missing is a practical implementation strategy: here I present ten relatively simple changes in how you run your project, to make it more attractive to would-be contributors—especially women.

The world of computers has changed. Sub-notebooks are becoming immensely popular, mobile phones based on Google’s Android software are about to come out (T-Mobile have just announced their G1 will launch on October 22), and computers are looking increasingly like small devices that fit in our pockets. The end of 2008 might see the dawn of a new revolution in the computer industry and in people’s lives. Maybe 2009 will be remembered as the year when the “world went mobile”. What does this mean for the (free and non-free) software industry? Where will we be, technologically and (more importantly) culturally? Where will the market (and the money) be?

Terry Hancock seemed to raise a few hackles when he presented case recently that “copyleft has no impact on project activity?!)”. I’m not certain why, because it seemed he was just asking a question really (you’ll note the question mark). In that piece he mentions the reasons developers choose a copyleft licence. As a — somewhat small-time — developer of free software this topic interests me. Terry made a few statements about why developers choose a copyleft licence as did Tony Mobily in his editorial for issue 20. So let me tell you why this developer chose (and continues to choose) a copyleft licence? Ryan Cartwright explains his reasons for using a copyleft licence.

In my last article I talked about how interest leads people to program. Then life rose up behind me like a giant Doberman pincer and bit me on my backside; so, I didn’t think of programming for over four months. However, just this week something happened that made me want to program again. I was preparing to teach some students how to use dichotomous keys to identify organisms. Suddenly, while I was staring at a simple teaching key for identifying fruit, my eyes glazed over and I had a moment of clarity. I realized that I was looking at the basis of a very simple program. It was a list of rules. Simple statements that said, “If this go here, if not go there.” In the back of my mind I could see the “either/or” options and the “goto” statements of my coding past, and I knew in my heart that I must make this key into a program!

In part one of this tutorial I looked at installing and configuring greylistd alongside Exim to help combat the evils of Spam. In this second part I will look at getting some information out of greylistd — handy if you need to troubleshoot why the CEO’s “urgent” message hasn’t arrived yet! Read Part Two of Ryan Cartwright's article on Exim and greylistd at Freesoftware Magazine.

Amarok sure inspires a lot of KDE-envy for Gnome users. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit in well in Gnome: it’s written for a different desktop environment, uses a whole different toolkit, and requires a lot of extra libraries to run. Luckily, there’s a great Gnome-based alternative: Rhythmbox. Andrew Min at Freesoftware Magazine explores the Gnome alternative to amarok. You can read the full article at FSM.

Traditional methods of spam protection involve using Bayesian detection rules (usually via SpamAssassin) on messages after they have been accepted by your server. Most mail sysadmins may have encountered the constant cries from their users asking “can’t you stop them sending it?”. Of course you can’t stop somebody sending a message but you can stop accepting them in the first place. Enter greylisting. These two articles are kind of follow-ons to my previous article on spam prevention in exim mail servers. Think of it as an appendix. If you are starting from scratch you might find is useful to go and read that first. Read Ryan Cartwright's article in full at Freesoftware Magazine.

You know a science story is big when an experiment gets first or second billing on the main evening news—and it’s not even a slow news day. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is up and running as I write and as far as I can tell I’m still here, so it looks like the doomsayers were a little premature. Unless I’m writing this piece from the far side of the singularity of a black hole in a parallel universe. The LHC is an huge experiment (a snip at $10 billion) to explore the very small and very energetic sub-atomic world to verify, amongst other things, if the Higgs Boson really exists. That will be a monumental triumph for science and the human spirit. I have always been fascinated by particle physics, despite by academic background in the Humanities and I will be following the progress at CERN with great interest. I am particularly pleased too because free software will be at the heart of this colossal human endeavour. GNU/Linux has been, is and will continue to power CERN’s efforts. This is a wonderful opportunity to tell the world that Windows doesn’t rule the roost. Read the full story at Freesoftware Magazine.

Recently, I collected some data from Sourceforge, hoping to find evidence for the importance of copyleft. But I found something surprising: although there’s plenty of evidence that many developers believe in the power of copyleft, the one measure I could derive of how much copyleft actually works showed that copyleft made no difference whatsoever! If true, this means a lot of free software’s social theory is wrong and many things will have to be re-thought. Terry Hancock at Freesoftware Magazine has a left-field take on copyleft. It's not all it seems apparently. Read the full article at FSM

Richard Stallman wants to popularise the term GNU/Linux instead of using the currently popular term Linux. He correctly states that the term Linux, besides being thoroughly inaccurate, totally fails to introduce new users to the legal and philosophical concepts that underlie the basis of the GNU/Linux OS; but is it feasible to make such a change at this late stage? Some weeks ago, trolling through prospective articles for Free Software Daily, I encountered a blog, describing the evolution of “Linux”. It was aimed at Newbies. The blog correctly described Linus Torvalds as the creator of the Linux kernel and a few more recent developments, but that was it. No mention was made that Richard Stallman actually created much of what is now called “Linux”, no mention of the GPL, or how it works, no mention of the copyleft legal concept and no mention of other responsibilities placed on users and developers. All of Richard Stallman’s worst fears confirmed in one blog. Read the full story at Freesoftware Magazine.

Terry Hancock at Freesoftware Magazine explores the empirical case for debunking six major myths on which the existing model of intellectual property is based and the belief that free development can only be a niche phenomenon. Read the full article at FSM

Chrome is in fact a reference to the imminent release of Google’s entry into the browser market. Apparently, the launch was accidentally “leaked” by a Google employee who was a little piggy fingered with the send button on his e-mail client. By the time you read this it may be available for download (probably Windows only in the first instance). I was intrigued by this because there have been “reviews” of Chrome already and the reason for this is the unique way Google has chosen to announce it. If you were launching a new browser, or anything else, would you do it through the medium of a comic? Gary Richmond at Freesoftware Magazine explores the Darwinian implications of Google's launch of their shiny new browser and who the winners and losers will be. You can read the full story at FSM

For a time, GNU/Linux music library tools seemed to be, well, non-existent. Sure, XMMS was an awesome media player. But if you wanted to catalog your music, you were out of luck. Apple users had iTunes and were always rubbing it into the free software world’s face. Even Microsoft, the sleeping Redmond giant, had upgraded Windows Media Player to include a library feature. Then, a giant wolf named Amarok charged to the rescue. Andrew Min at Freesoftware Magazine sings the praises of Amarok, the musical poster boy of GNU/Linux, and explores it major features. You can read the full, illustrated article at FSM

Tony Mobily, Editor in Chief of Free Software Magazine, interviewed one of the founders of Dreamhost to explore their committment to free software on their server and hosting systems. Read the full article at FSM

When I came across the oddly named SliTaz I really didn’t know what to expect. Yet another predictable fork of some better known distro which would blaze briefly in the free software firmament, burn out and fall to Earth, spent? Boy, was I ever wrong. If you want to know why Switzerland may be about to become better known for more than chocolate and Cuckoo clocks, read on and be prepared to be impressed and delighted by a live distro of exceptional speed and size. Read the full story about this remarkable minature live GNU/Linux CD at Freesoftware Magazine

I just heard about the proposed ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) over at Free Software Daily and from the Free Software Foundation. Right now the governments of the United States, the European Commission, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada, and Mexico are secretly negotiating this new treaty which aims to increase the enforcement of intellectual property laws yet again. Find out more and what you can do to combat ACTA. Read the full article at Freesoftware Magazine

Inkscape is one of the most popular free software vector drawing applications. With minimal effort you can achieve some excellent results. However, for the inexperienced it can be a bit hard to find out how to get those results. In this tutorial I’ll look at creating a simple ribbon effect which will hopefully introduce some of the key Inkscape features along the way. The ever versatile Ryan Cartwright eases you gently into the ways of Inkscape. You can read the full article at Freesoftware Magazine

Some websites need to handle data securely and assure the end-user they are a) secure and b) who they say they are. The traditional way to achieve these is via Secure Socket Layer. Firefox 3 changed what happens when a self-signed SSL certificate is encountered. It’s a change which has caused some concern and much discussion. Should we only trust certificates signed by third parties? Are there cases where using a self-signed certificate is valid? Should users be informed or warned and how strong should the language of that notification be? Is it possible a simple solution is already available but has been overlooked in all the flan-flinging? I think so. If you've ever been confused about browser security, Ryan Cartwright explains the issues. Read the full story at Freesoftware Magazine.

Zock is a new piece of free software for organizing betting games. It is a “betting office” targeted at cliques of friends or co-workers which would like to organize a betting game for a sport event. Right now, it needs testers. If you are interested in using it, read on. Read the full story at Freesoftware Magazine.

A report by the Standish Group indicates that adoption of ‘open source’ has caused a drop in revenue to the proprietary software industry by about $60 billion per year. That’s not a huge amount of money compared to what has been lost though the misselling of mortgages, but it is still a lot. The report identifies the value of these ‘open source’ products to be about 6% of the world market for software. Unfortunately, the Standish Group doesn’t believe in openly sharing its research, instead selling it for $1,000… Read the full story at Freesoftware Magazine