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Some folks will never ever understand FOSS, or anything worthwhile, because they think the universe starts and ends with money, and that the pursuit of money justifies anything.

Linux Australia assert they are the peak body for Linux user groups around Australia and represent some 5,000 Australian Linux users and developers. Yet, the 2009 elections roused a mere 66 voters. Why didn't people vote? (And, in a related incident, why can't I please all the people all the time?)

Embedded Linux has now been around for a decade and consistently ranks as one of the top OS choices for device development. But, does it still have its mojo?

Hear a live interview with ZDNet's TechBroiler blogger Jason Perlow. This is Jason's second visit to Frugal Friday. Jason was the first guest on the show with the topic of Virtualization. This week he explains how Linux will get you through these tough economic times.

The next two releases of Silverlight will take Microsoft's media player in completely new directions, the technical executive in charge has promised. The corporate vice president of Microsoft's developer division Scott Guthrie told the company's Channel 9 "whole new areas you can't do today will start to open up" with Silverlight 3 and 4.

When Sun Microsystems announced financial results this week, The VAR Guy had a moment of clarity: Sun is looking more and more like a larger version of Novell. And The VAR Guy means that in a complimentary way. Here’s why.

A former Unix engineer for Fannie Mae was indicted for planting malicious code on the corporation's network that was to 'destroy and alter' all of the data on the company's servers this Saturday.

Proprietary software, we all know it, almost all of us have once used it. Video games are software, and the majority of all games on the market are still proprietary. When a free game uses a popular GNU/Linux distribution logo, therefore, trademark, to describe something; most GNU/Linux distribution vendors let it slide. But the same treatment shouldn't be given to the proprietary video game software vendors. The free-- though closed source-- video game 'Combat Arms' for the Windows operating system may be committing copyright and/or trademark infringement.

Simon Phipps is a natural when it comes to speaking. The man has a good turn of phrase, is skilled in the art of repartee, and can engage an audience very well. Sun's chief open source officer was one of three keynote speakers at the recent Australian national Linux conference. He spoke to iTWire soon after he had given his keynote.

Maths is a famously lonely discipline - I should know, having spent three years of my life grappling with a single equation (the equation won). Mathematicians meet, and collaborate, it's true; but what would a truly open source approach to the process of solving mathematical problems look like? Maybe something like this:

Next weekend, the Fedora community will be at the ninth Free and Open source Software Developers European Meeting (FOSDEM)–one of the best free and open source events in Europe. And this year again, we expect an amazing attendance. More than 40 Fedora ambassadors are coming from different parts of Europe to represent Fedora and welcome visitors. Incredible, when three years ago, there were only two of us. Another reason to say Fedora is more powerful than 2³ and e³!

Doesn't this sound like a perfect package manager? "Nix...allows multiple versions of a package to be installed side-by-side, ensures that dependency specifications are complete, supports atomic upgrades and rollbacks, allows non-root users to install software..." Bruce Byfield takes a look at NixOS and answers the question "Is this the final answer on Linux package management?"

Politicians in general are not terribly tech-savvy, let alone conscious of the most important intellectual freedom issues, but President Barack Obama does have a reputation of being more aware than most of the new media and new possibilities of the internet. The new US presidential website shows some promise that indeed, we now have a US president who isn’t afraid of the future. Is Obama up for free software? Read Terry Hancock's article at Freesoftware Magazine and find out.

ATI has just released its Catalyst 9.1 driver package, bringing full OpenGL 3.0 support to the table, a feature which was made available to Nvidia videocard owners for the first time a month ago. While Direct3D has emerged as a front runner for Windows gaming, it should be noted that OpenGL 3.0's features can be enabled on both XP and Vista, and also Linux and Mac OS.

Sun Microsystems’ OpenSolaris 2008.11 includes improvements around software package management and incorporating community packaging efforts. The updates to the free Solaris-based OS shows that Sun will not follow IBM and HP in letting Linux take over the platform space once dominated by Unix.

I am against hacking in principle, and I suppose there was a chance this could have led to traffic problems and, worst-case, perhaps injury. But funny is funny:

Five years from now, Google -- rather than Microsoft -- will dominate the software as a service (SaaS) industry, according to a weekly reader poll conducted by MSPmentor, the ultimate guide to managed services. Here are the details.

Whilst an increasing number of recent converts are avoiding it (and I don’t blame them really), the shell is still a key tool for the majority of GNU/Linux users. Shell scripts are knocked-up, shared and deployed in all sorts of circumstances — some simply time-saving, others life-saving. But even if the shell script has been written by somebody else, running it can be a cumbersome and frightening exercise for users of lesser experience or confidence. How do we bring the flexibility of the shell script to the GUI-only user? Recently faced with just such a quandary, I discovered Zenity: a tool which just might have saved my sanity. Read the first installment of this Zenity tutorial at Freesoftware Magazine.

I came up with an idea this week: What if Microsoft made Windows open source? Before you accuse of me of link baiting, I believe this idea has merit for several reasons. It will reduce the cost of development, put the power of the community behind supporting what's become an endless and expensive project and let Microsoft concentrate on enterprise solutions and cloud initiatives.

[We've asked this question before haven't we? - Scott]

Despite earlier announcing that it would only ship a Windows XP version of its 10-inch Aspire One netbook, Acer now says it plans to release a Linux version as well.