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Getting a grip on all the legalities associated with open source and proprietary software licensing is a daunting task. To gain that understanding, says Mark Webbink, general counsel for Red Hat, one first needs to understand the true legal implications of words like patent, copyright, proprietary and open. After that, students of software law can get into more advanced subjects, such as an examination of what happens when developers mingle applications that were created under different licenses.

Firefox continues to gain users in Europe as it does in the U.S., a French Web metrics firm said Tuesday, although the rate of increase appears to be slowing. The Mozilla Foundation's reaction? It's the bottom line market share numbers that matter, not how fast, or slow, Firefox attracts fans.

The GNU Compiler for Java (GCJ), a free software implementation of Java, has been in development for seven years, but with the Free Software Foundation's recent call for volunteers, the project is suddenly receiving more attention than ever before. For many, GCJ is seen as a means of ensuring that the next version of OpenOffice.org does not require non-free versions of Java for full functionality. Yet the scope of the project goes far beyond this immediate need.

A number of open-source software projects will have to decide before the end of the month whether they want to continue using the proprietary source code management system, BitKeeper.

Research from two Harvard boffins claims to prove that the Open Sauce [sic?] movement will not wipe out the activities of Microsoft. Harvard Business School professors Pankaj Ghemawat and Ramon Casadesus-Masanell said that most research into the OSS movement has focused on the organisation and management issues, that makes Open Source look good.

In an interview at Red Hat's inaugural user conference here, CEO Matthew Szulik said that the best opportunities for the company's open-source software stack lie outside the US.

Linux screen recordings with vnc2swf and vnc2rec, More kernel compiling fun, We discuss the Apple move to Intel and the possible ramifications for GNU/Linux, Debian finally has a new release, And much, much more

Effective this morning, Bruce Perens has joined the open source support firm SourceLabs as vice president of Developer Relations and Policy. Perens describes his mission at SourceLabs as being "to build bridges between enterprise IT and the open source community." There is something of an "Odd Couple" flavor to the deal since one of the two primary venture capitalists behind SourceLabs is none other than Microsoft's recently departed chief financial officer, Brad Silverberg. NewsForge spoke briefly with Perens about his new job yesterday.

InsynQ Releases MyBooks Professional Software for Linspire, Filling Linux Application Gap

Tuxcards and KnowIt are two twists on the same idea. These open source two-pane outliners can be used as quickly searchable notebooks, or collections of Web clippings, to-do lists, or projects in progress. Both make fine text databases, and both are handy for the planning of complex documents.

The MEPIS community asked for an "easy migration path from Windows 98," and this week MEPIS LLC delivered with MEPISLite 3.3.1 -- a lightweight version of SimplyMEPIS 3.3.1 optimized for "modest hardware." To run gently on older machines, MEPISLite includes skinnier packages and a number of tweaks to minimize "disk thrashing."

Many firms today profess a desire for the price/performance, security and reliability associated with Linux. But, Novell strategist John Dobbs points out, most are still only experimenting with the open source operating system while proprietary offerings hum with life on the majority of their desktops and servers.

Unisys has strengthened its commitment to Novell's SUSE Linux operating system, creating a migration center in Europe to help users migrate to SUSE Linux Enterprise server from Unix.

The Debian Project has finally released a long-anticipated new version of its widely-used Linux distribution.

Contrary to some reports, the community-driven continuation of the Mozilla Application Suite has not been officially named SeaMonkey. Earlier today, Henrik Gemal claimed that the Mozilla Application Suite would be rebranded as SeaMonkey based on some patches attached to an installer bug report. However, Alex Vincent stated that the SeaMonkey name is not yet official.

Whether you are an experienced web programmer or a complete novice attempting to provide data interactivity with your web site, MyQSL is an easy to use and free database solution that can allow you to store and configure data to be displayed on your web site.

I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with Chad Hanson, Manager of the Trusted Operating Systems Lab at Trusted Computer Solutions in Urbana, Illinois. Chad has a long history in working with Trusted Operating Systems. He came to Trusted Computer Solutions from Argus Systems, where he led the development of PitBull, itself a Trusted Operating System. Chad's experience also includes leading the design and development of new components to NSA SE Linux that are leading to greater security in the Linux kernel.

Firefox is enjoying success in Europe by snaffling market share from mighty Microsoft.

Slackware is the tried and true Linux distribution. It's been here since (near) the beginning. And now it's hit version 10.1. Come check out LinuxForumsDOTorg's in-depth look at the newest iteration of Slack here.

MS' proposal for resolving antitrust issues leaves open source out of the equation, which could knock Samba out of the game.