An odd bit of news from the xorg foundation. During some discussion on their mailing list about missing funds it became apparent that PayPal had simply taken $5k of their money because PayPal thought xorg foundation were some sort of scam.

When Scott Thompson left Visa to take the CTO role at PayPal in 2005, the Web company's data centre surprised him. "Wait a minute," he recalls saying, "they run a payment system on Linux?"

The purpose of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is probably obvious from its name -- but what does promoting free software mean in terms of everyday activity? Examining the roles of the organization shows how complex the FSF's advocacy role has become.

"So if anyone knows me personally, they know I am a huge Blender head and proponent of free software, meaning free as in freedom of speech not free beer. I am especially fond of any software released under the terms of the GNU General Public License from the Free Software Foundation.

"You can make a general donation online, using the form below if you have a credit card or a PayPal account. Or make a directed donation for a specific fund..."

"BOSTON, August 12, 2008—The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU Project announce the requests for nominations for the 11th annual Free Software Awards [...] The Free Software Foundation Award for the Advancement of Free Software is presented annually by FSF President Richard Stallman to a person who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of free software, through a

Choosing to release a piece of software under the terms of a free software license is an important step through which many programmers and writers first approach the free software community. However, the myriad of licenses available can sometimes confuse and disorient the user, sometimes making this first step much harder than it should be. Let's try and make things clearer.

PayPal is currently processing $1,571 worth of transactions per second in 17 different currencies on about 4,000 servers running Red Hat Linux.

"Not only is the free software movement a source of software and licenses, it is also a source of inspiration. In particular, free software has been cited by many in the nascent free culture movement as an explicit source of inspiration and point of departure.