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The free and open source software world offers many different licenses, and this richness has both advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, developers differ in what they want to let others do with their code, and consequently need different licenses. On the other, many licenses do not allow anyone to use the code to which they apply inside products governed by other licenses (cross-license sharing). But this problem may be solved by a special kind of license -- a metalicense.

Remember SCO telling everyone they hoped to file their 10K prior to their delisting meeting with Nasdaq? Bob Mims of the Salt Lake Tribune tells us what happened yesterday at the meeting in Washington, and what leaps out is that they did not file the 10K:

IBM and Novell have launched a program to accelerate the development and certification of Novell's SUSE Linux on IBM's eServer and middleware platforms. IBM hopes the scheme will help double the number of Linux apps independent developers make for its servers within the next two years.

Embedded Linux operating system company LynuxWorks says it will have a new product out this summer that promises to make Linux a more viable system for running military-grade real-time applications, such as aircraft control systems.

As they peer deeper into potentially life-saving and enriching research on stem cells, genes, agriculture, and more, biotech researchers are calling more and more on the software and ideas of the open source community. Biotech leaders are building collaborative biotech systems, sites, and programs that are based on open source code and ethos. The movement is also trying to turn patents upside down so they serve as tools that force collaboration.

As bandwidth and processor power increase, so do the compelling reasons to consider voice and video over IP. Damien Sandras' polished GnomeMeeting application is a good example. Howard Wen recently interviewed Sandras about the project's successes, goals, and plans.

Today's headlines in the Java world herald the arrival of nothing less than a new era in Java ... licensing. The latest announcements from the innovative leaders in both proprietary and open source software license production, have been brought to the general blogging public today via a widely reported teleconference. Sun announced that they will announce yet another license for their source code later, maybe. In the long standing tradition of sweet license names like "scuzzle" or "cuddle", the new license will be pronounced "jewel", and written as JIUL. So what's wrong with the current license, SCSL, cuddly nicknamed scuzzle and a jewel in Sun's crown? Hailed by Sun on its arrival back in 1998 as a blend of the best aspects of the proprietary and Open Source license models, the license failed to gain support, and has been widely debunked as as far from being open source as it gets without explicitely writing a license that violates each and every clause of the OSI definition.

EDS' vice-president of Global Alliances, Robb Rasmussen, this week launched an extraordinary attack on the open source software. At an event in Sydney to spruik the benefits of the so-called EDS Agility Alliance -- a grouping of vendors which have nominated as preferred suppliers of their speciality technologies to the services company -- Rasmussen claimed that Linux had issues with security, scalability and a potential to splinter in the same way as Unix did.

MIT's Media Lab has recommended Brazil install open-source software instead of proprietary software offered by Microsoft on thousands of computers that will be sold to the poor, according to a letter obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

After failed experiments with Slackware, a few years of SUSE, and a brief flirtation with Debian, I've been working and playing on Gentoo. I don't care for endless optimisations, and I'm not especially bothered about the bloat of a few unnecessary extra features, nor do I enjoy waiting days to update KDE -- so why do I like Gentoo? Simple: Portage package management, the hands-off approach to configuration, the excellent documentation, and the unsurpassed community support forum.

With the advent of 64bit CPUs becoming more affordable and widely used, several Linux vendors now offer 64bit versions of their distributions. But among all the amd64, 64bit, and x86_64 platforms, is it worth choosing 64bit over established 32bit distributions? Read the article and join the discussion here.

Asa Dotzler has announced that Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.1 has been cancelled and Mozilla Firefox 1.0.2 and Thunderbird 1.0.2 releases are on the way. Asa explains, "We shipped the security update for Firefox 1.0 three weeks ago with the intention of shipping the Thunderbird and Mozilla Suite upates soon after. Well, just as we were getting ready to push out Thunderbird 1.0.1 and Mozilla 1.7.6 releases we came across a couple more issues that needed fixing in all three of our products."

Linspire Five-0 is so simple even a top managment can use it, according to chief executive Michael Robertson.

Some Irish open-source advocates are lobbying their Parliament members to fight software patents in the European Union.

An improved colour scheme and a tool that reads out text should make KDE Linux desktop more usable for those whose vision is impaired.

Linspire Five-0 boasts nearly 1,200 enhancements; a professional version is due later this year.

Linux kernel developer Harald Welte talks about the challenges of single-handedly tackling companies that violate the GPL.

Has Ireland's close relationship with IT giants such as Microsoft influenced its approach to software patents?

Created a forum for GoblinX's users. GoblinX is a bootable live CD distribution based on Slackware Linux.

His company is now called Digium. It provides Asterisk-based PBXes and telephone hardware, and sponsors the Asterisk open source project. He is competing in a world of office telephone hardware dominated by the big telephone equipment players, such as Nortel, Alcatel and Siemens.