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Mozilla has played a major role in bringing open standards to the Web, but does the general move to apps risk rendering it irrelevant for smartphones? Mozilla's new CEO, Gary Kovacs, explains how he plans to keep Mozilla at the forefront of Web technology, and to save us from mobile's walled gardens too.

The GNU GPL depends on copyright to work. So what would happen if copyright were abolished? Would that mean that free software also disappears? Richard Stallman thinks not - and has a plan.

If open source is so successful, why aren't there any billion-dollar open source companies? Red Hat's CEO, Jim Whitehurst, gives a clue: to get to $5 billion turnover, Red Hat must displace $50 billion of revenue from proprietary companies. That's hard - and why there will be very few big open source companies.

Most people in the hacking community are well aware that patents represent one of the most serious threats to free software. But the situation is actually even worse than it seems, thanks to the proliferation of what are called patent thickets. To understand why these are so bad, and why they represent a particular problem for software, it is necessary to go back to the beginning of patent law.

It's becoming increasingly clear that the Internet's perfect copying machine makes copyright largely irrelevant today: once a copy is online somewhere, it's impossible to take it down everywhere. Could the arrival of digital 3D printers like the open source RepRap do the same for patents, by making it possible for anyone to download and print off analogue objects? With copyright and patents powerless, what might manufacturing companies turn to in order to differentiate themselves from counterfeit versions? How about trade secrets and trademarks?

In the wake of Google Chrome's increasing market share, and doubts from some about the future prospects for Firefox growth, Mozilla needs to do something bold to regain the initiative. How about forking Firefox? If Mozilla doesn't do it, someone else probably will...

By now, everyone has heard about Diaspora, the free software project to create a distributed version of Facebook, and the fact that it has raised $170,000 in just a couple of weeks. But what people might overlook is the innovative way that Diaspora has raised that money - by offering a graded series of scarce goods in return for monetary pledges. Could this be the future of free software funding?

The final version of the important Digital Agenda for Europe has been leaked – and shows that the European Commission has betrayed open standards. Where an earlier draft had an entire section headed “Open Standards and Interoperability”, the latest version only uses the word “open” once in the corresponding section “Interoperability and standards.”

What is Linus Torvalds' secret to managing the Linux development community? And is it a technique that can be applied elsewhere? You might be surprised by the answer.

Recently, Eben Moglen was warning about the threat to freedom that cloud computing services like Facebook represent. He also proposed creating a distributed, free software alternative. Looks like the new Diaspora project has taken him up on that idea.

Facebook's latest moves to control the heart of the Web are worrying many people. Luckily, Mozilla has just announced a new Firefox project to manage identity that may be just what we need: a free software alternative to Facebook's plans. Will the next big battle between open and closed be fought between Firefox and Facebook?

Richard Stallman seems an unstoppable force of nature, constantly fighting for the things he believes in. And yet in a new interview he says: “I have certainly wished I had killed myself when I was born.”

Software patent law is not for the faint hearted. Now the FSF has funded a new video where top hackers and legal experts explain where the idea came from and just why it is so bad for free software. With increasing evidence that patents harm, rather then help, innovation, is the tide beginning to turn against software patents?

Here's a big win for open source: an Italian court has approved a law in Piedmont giving preference to open source, ruling that it is not anti-competitive. That's great for Italy, but also sets a useful precedent for other countries.

Microsoft it trying to get open source and open standards excluded from a key EU document, the Digital Agenda for Europe. If it succeeds, it would be a massive setback for open source throughout the continent. EU citizens need to write to the Commissioners now.

MySQL has been the defining company for the second free software era. Now, it seems, leadership in the open source database market is moving on.

Microsoft's “Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel” has written a piece entitled “Apple v. HTC: A Step Along the Path of Addressing IP Rights in Smartphones” that is basically a warning that the company is about to join in suing companies producing software for smartphones. Is this a veiled attack on Linux?

Here's an interesting story: Microsoft deciding to release some code as open source for all the right reasons (although there's still a fly in the ointment...).

A post on Microsoft's Port 25 blog manages to talk about open source platforms without mentioning Linux once: instead it refers to "POSIX-compatible" code. Feeling threatened, are we, perhaps?

Case studies of open source success are always useful - especially when, like this one, they show how a UK government project that cost £100 million ($150 million) using traditional approaches but still didn't work properly, was fixed for just £35,000 ($53,000) using free software.