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You run GNU/Linux. You play games on it, surf the Net, write documents, and edit pictures, and all for free, thanks to the multitudes around the world who contribute to the open source movement. Now it's payback time -- time to give back to the global fraternity giving you so much. Here are 10 ways you can help right now.

Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy spoke with IDG News Service correspondent Robert McMillan about company changes, plans for 2005 and how open source relates to Solaris and Java.

Simpler survey needs may be met by open-source portal apps.

61 EU members of parliament from 13 countries lead by the Polish ex-prime minister Jerzy Buzek are demanding that the legislative process on the controversial directive on the patentability of "computer-implemented inventions" begin again from scratch.

More than 60 MEPs from 13 countries have asked the EU to go back to the drawing board on the software patent directive.

The adoption of the Mozilla Foundation's browser by millions of non-technical users could be the biggest test yet of open source development

There are cases when for evaluation, demonstration, recovery or otherwise you don't want to install a new operating system onto a hard drive. It's in those cases that a "non-invasive" CD-based operating system (look ma no hard drive!), in the Linux world usually called Live CDs (or Linux Live) really comes in handy. The "granddaddy" of all Linux Live OSes, Knoppix, recently released its latest version, 3.7.

aplawrence.com is mostly a big wiki full of original content about Linux and Unix-like operating systems and related information. Who knew it was there? Evidently quite a few people, judging by the regular activity. Tony Lawrence, the guy who owns aplawrence.com, says the site gets more than 100,000 visitors a month.

Linux has gotten progressively simple to install and setup over the past few years. Sure, it's been on a steady path for far longer than that, but only in the past 2-3 years have we seen some of the biggest advancements in the history of the popular Open Source operating system. Application packaging is one of the biggest areas that still seems to remain untouched.

Novell will soon detail plans to include server virtualisation technology into its SUSE Linux operating system, and Red Hat has vowed to do the same thing. A leading contender for both may be an open-source virtualisation technology called Xen.

In the first month after it's release, Thunderbird 1.0 has been downloaded 2 million times! That's two million people that won't be getting the next round of Outlook viruses. That's 2 million people who will be able to push the spam aside with Thunderbird's innovative junk-mail filters and get back to using e-mail again rather than being abused by it. That's two million people who will have access to the new and exciting world of RSS. Simply put, that's 2 million people who will enjoy using e-mail again :-)

Things are changing rapidly in the world of IT, and have been for many years. This trend shows no sign of slowing down any time soon. How many times have you finally come to grips with product X version 1, and then found that version 3 is due for release next week? Good training, properly done, can shorten that learning curve dramatically, letting you get value out of the product before the next best thing comes along.

The open-source movement has already rewritten the rules for how software is licensed and used. Now the computer services market is changing to keep up.

Showing government offices and agencies how Linux and open-source software provide better security.

The Open Source Applications Foundation, headed by Lotus Development Corp. founder Mitchell Kapor, is moving forward on a next-generation e-mail/calendar program, code-named Chandler, designed to enhance computing collaboration by expressing more meaningful relationships between different categories of data. Chandler is targeting its 1.0 version for late this year or early next year.

The catalogue of open source products is growing in breadth and sophistication. But can it really form the basis for a comprehensive – and free – enterprise software stack?

You just installed your favorite Linux distribution and all your hardware is working. Your data is ready to go and all the default applications are working perfectly. You've even changed the wallpaper, theme, and window decorations. What's next?

A recent, well-written article appeared on newsforge that raised some issues about Freedom and Free Software and the context was something to the effect of "What's it worth to you? Are you willing to go through some sacrifices to maintain your Freedom or get it back?"

Email is commonly used in business today, yet only a small percentage of users take the time to guarantee their email is sent in a secure and confidential manner. If you're not part of that elite group, read on to learn how to setup OpenPGP with the Mozilla Thunderbird mail component.

Is Sun getting with the Open Source Community?