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In 2005, the Debian project voted to declassify messages on the debian-private mailing list after a period of three years. That is easier said than done, apparently. The General Resolution (GR) calls for volunteers to do the work of declassification, and few Debian Developers seem eager to do the work required to make it happen.

Google will crack open more of Android's development process but keep new versions of its mobile OS closed for competitive reasons. The giant will change Android's Native code Development Kit (NDK) so that contributed code joins the publicly available Android source tree rather than going into Google's private tree.

"Why am I reinventing Disqus? That is the question I've been getting asked since I 'announced' on Identi.ca that I'd be replacing Disqus with a free (AGPL) comment system that I was to write." ... "Complete lack of Source Code: Currently, Disqus doesn't distribute their source code, and don't plan to do so in the future." ... "And who exactly is the owner of the comments when Disqus claims broad rights to use the 'content' in anyway they see fit?" ...

"The idea of implementing more open source in government is far from a new idea. In February of 2009, Osborne published an article in The Times that said when it comes to IT, big companies should take steps towards open standards and that government should take advantage of available open source technologies."

The Inverse Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of SOGo 1.3.0. This is a major release of SOGo which focuses on many new features and improved stability over previous versions.

In the Linux desktop world, the graphical user interface is here to stay. Old Unix hands may grumble, but the fact remains that, without all the efforts poured into GNOME, KDE, Xfce and others, Linux would not be as successful as it is today. The reason for the desktop's success is obvious. A desktop requires much less knowledge than a command line, and is suited to maybe 80% of the most common tasks that an average user needs. If the desktop needs much larger applications, that hardly seems a problem on a modern computer.

Have you ever wanted to look inside a tar.gz file but without expanding it? Have you ever wanted to just dump files in a .tar.gz file without having to organize it and periodically tar and gzip this data? This article presents another REALLY useful user-space file system, archivemount. It allows you to mount archives such as .tar.gz files as a file system and interact with it using normal file/directory tools.

Banshee, the open-source media player that's built with Mono and Gtk#, is working towards their 1.8 milestone but today they have put out a new development snapshot. What's special about this new development release, Banshee 1.7.3, is that it adds support for Amazon's MP3 store and brings other enhancements too.

Morevna is an open source anime project made using open source tools like Synfig, Blender, GIMP and Krita. Unlike Project London Movie, Morevna is not only created using free and open source tools, but Morevna anime will also be released and distributed as free content. This project definitely deserves a lot of appreciation.

Many people still cling to the notion that Linux is for 30-year-old male geeks. While that may be true, there are plenty of other people of all ages, ethnicities, and genders who enjoy Linux and other free and open source software. For the most part, the operating systems a child uses are determined by the child’s parents and school. As the parent and Linux user yourself, you may prefer your child to use Linux at home.

Acer is switching its consumer-oriented EP101TC tablet (pictured) from Windows CE to Android, claims NetbookNews. Meanwhile, HP has trademarked the word "Palmpad," which is likely to be the name for its upcoming WebOS-based tablet, says The Inquirer.

Hardware compatibility, ease of use, the size of a software repository. These three attributes are unique to each Linux distribution. But at the same time, each Linux distribution is at liberty to take and mix whatever it wants from any other. This creates a rather unique situation, where good ideas quickly spread, and bad ones fail. And as a result, there are dozens of distribution updates each month, hundreds each year, in a race to leap-frog the each other in the race to the top of the DistroWatch.com charts.

Over the years I’ve come to appreciate the value of simplicity in systems administration. The more simple a setup is, the more likely it will be stable and easy to fix and maintain. If a setup is so complicated that it takes serious brainpower just to comprehend, chances are that there is going to be something wrong somewhere. Obviously, systems administrators have been dealing with complexity for a long time, and the basic sysadmin toolbox reflects the lean towards keeping it simple.

We love Linux, and want to make it easier for others to do so, too. This first edition of the Lifehacker Pack for Linux includes our favorite apps that get things done and make your desktop great. Linux isn't quite like Windows or Mac, as there are many, many distributions, usually running on one of two desktop systems (GNOME or KDE). We've chosen to write this list up from the perspective of a standard, GNOME-based Ubuntu user. Ubuntu is what the Lifehacker editors use, it's what most of our Linux-leaning readers use, and it's generally popular and frequently updated. Many of these apps can be downloaded and installed on other Linux systems, of course—check the Download link, or search out its name in your own system's package installer.

The security world is aflutter over new malware that has been spreading via USB devices and is programmed to steal data from systems running specific software used in utilities and industrial manufacturing plants.

There are a lot of moving parts to this story so we've decided to break them down and tell you what is happening and how it impacts you.

Christopher Blizzard, Mozilla's Director of Developer Relations and Open Source Evangelist, has announced that he has taken a new role at the company, the non-profit organisation behind the popular open source Firefox web browser. In a post on his personal blog, Blizzard, the former Software Team Lead for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, says that, over the last few months, he's "been focused on one aspect of that job more than others – helping to drive the web-facing side of our platform."

Canonical has released a virtual appliance for running instances of IBM DB2 database software, the company announced on Wednesday.

Earlier this week however I was curious as to just want browsers were "supported" by the Blackboard (online education) system. It was then that I discovered what they really meant by "supported browsers" was "supported operating systems and browsers".

It seems the Kubuntu developers aren't big fans of Kaffeine 1.0 and want a new default media player for Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.

Six releases in 18 months. Is it too much? With six releases in just a year and a half is Android risking extreme fragmentation? Or is this just the way Google does business?