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Software, whether application software like gcc or system software like Linux which are part of the Free Software Foundation attract masses by their appeal of being free. In reality, this in-born-nature of FSF software of being free (in the sense of freedom of speech and not free beer) is not so clear and cogent to a common man. More significantly, if one takes an in-depth look into the Linux world, things seem to go the other way.

With KDE 3.4 beta just announced a few days ago spokesman George Staikos has written about the new RSS/RDF/Atom Aggregator included in the new relase, aKregator, in his column KDE: From the Source. "In contrast to a news ticker style of RSS application, you don't need to constantly look at aKregator to see if there is new news. I have found that with news tickers such as the applet in KDE, I was constantly staring at the news feeds as they scrolled by and re-reading the same headlines over and over. With aKregator, I find I never look at old news as headlines that are read are conveniently grayed out and pushed down the list." This is a much better way to track news in KDE than the somewhat outdated news ticker.

Distrowatch is one of the best resources for people who want to choose a Linux distro they'd find suitable. The site also raises awareness for smaller distributions. It has a large database with just about every Linux distribution currently available, along with useful information about each one that will help Linux searchers find the best one for them.

Linux vendors Red Hat, Novell and MandrakeSoft on Wednesday released patches for several vulnerabilities, ranging from flaws that could allow denial-of-service attacks to buffer overflows.

Computer users may spend hundreds of dollars to equip their machines with software. But thanks to freeware and open source software that can rival high-priced software, those on a student budget may not have to choose between buying a software program and eating.

The company has added support for the AMD 64-bit architecture to its compiler suite for Linux clusters

Many IT managers would like to switch to enterprise Linux, but balk at having to port existing applications to a new platform. Fear not, for porting existing apps to Linux doesn't have to be a head-banging activity, says application development expert Gopi Kumar Bulusu. So stop balking, and make the pitch to switch your company to Linux. In this interview, he offers tips that can simplify application porting. Bulusu is chief architect and managing director at Sankhya Technologies Private Limited, a distributed system software company based in India.

2004 was a portent of things to come for Linux in 2005, both because of what didn't happen (SCO Group's victory) and what did (the rise of open source software), according to Marten Mickos, CEO of Sweden-based MySQL AB. In this interview, he predicts how those events, which included the success of MySQL's database, will play out in 2005.

If there's a real bottom line here, the one thing I'm clear on is that I haven't found it yet, but the questions raised have been more interesting that the answers -- so more help would be welcomed.

Bob is the VP of IBM Standards. He says: "To be clear, this is not a "donation," but rather a pledge of the patents to seed and then maintain a patent commons for open source projects." Go here to see his other comments and his extensive list of links to articles on the subject from all the major developer and business publications. There is also a link to the Patent Description Document, which provides the nitty-gritty of the patent release.

I recently got a chance to interview George Staikos, the Official Representative for the KDE Project in North America. He addresses some questions on the current status of the KDE project, and about the problems they have faced.

A lot of development has happened since KDE 3.4 Alpha, so we are now happy to publish KDE 3.4 Beta 1 code named Krokodile.

Nearly 10,000 computers in Chilean schools will be turned into thin clients running Linux and applications such as OpenOffice.org and Mozilla.

Following up on the success of the Firefox open-source Web browser, released by the Mozilla Foundation last autumn, open-source software developers are preparing some new products aimed at a consumer market still dominated by proprietary software.

A hard drive crash over the holidays left me scrambling to get back to a productive desktop as quickly as possible. Luckily, I had my /home partition on a separate drive, so I didn't lose precious email, stories, research, and pictures. But it did get me thinking about my lack of preparedness. Where was the back-up system I've talked about for years, but never acquired? This is the tale of how I rectified that glaring omission, and built myself a personal back-up system using inexpensive parts and free software.

The European Computer Driving License wants to become the world standard certification for computer end-users. What it promises in exchange is more productivity at home and work, an official, international acknowledgment of one's skills and, consequently, more chances to find a qualified job. While ECDL certification tends to be award to those with Windows skills and experience, it could represent an opportunity for free software supporters.

Two years after its first attempt fell short, Red Hat is trying again to reach beyond its own employees for help developing its Linux line.

A great way to debug glibc functions is to override the function of interest with your own version. This can be done without having root permissions and without recompiling the libc source. Imagine the pure thrill of writing your own version of open()!

Free Software Magazine is a new magazine entirely dedicated to free software. It contains quality articles relating to both technical and non-technical issues. The magazine's goal is to publish good articles which are then released under a free license after publication. The magazine obviously needs subscribers - the more, the better! Also, the magazine's editor (myself) is looking for articles on Gnome. Please contact him if you have any proposals!

In this month's column, the author explains how to determine code complexity with complexity metrics and introduces his own metric, PyMetric.