As November 5's national election looms in the United States, voters can expect increasing coverage of the hot-button issues through the mainstream media and campaign ads. On issues important to the open source and free software communities, however, information is harder to come by. Today we take a look at what the Democratic and Republican candidates say about questions close to the FOSS voter.

Douglas Karr at the Marketing Technology Blog decided to survey the Web sites of Presidential candidates, finding out what software they were running and where they were hosted. It’s curious that open source dominates among Democrats, with only Hillary Clinton crossing the aisle to run Windows. Four Republicans

Those of us who live in America are currently in the midst of that most protracted, expensive and (often) tedious of all democratic processes: the quadrennial quest to find, and perhaps even elect, the most able leader to guide the nation into the future. Part and parcel to that spectacle is a seemingly endless torrent of printed words and video.

Philips might be taken to court after using illegal force to 'protect' patents; US candidates on patent reform; patent trolls watch.

The House of Representatives has passed the Restore Act, which facilitates broad surveillance of foreign terror groups while restoring the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court's oversight of communications between foreign and domestic surveillance targets.

"Hi all, The nomination period is at an end, with three candidates standing forth to be counted. We are now in the campaigning period. The candidates are..."

On February 12, the Senate passed a terrible surveillance bill granting immunity to lawbreaking telecoms, putting the House and Senate at the brink of a face-off. Show your support for the House to keep telecom immunity out of the final bill! Call or email your Senator now to stop telecom immunity!

"THE EU COMMISSION has warned that France’s quest for universal internet access would be hampered by a presidential proposal to tax broadband usage. The plan is to supplement the licence fee for public broadcast television and radio which has a funding shortfall due to the decision to abolish advertising in order to 'raise standards'..."

"a new initiative promoted by the italian association for free software for the next italian political elections (provided that they will actually take place…). the initiative consists in asking the candidates to sign a letter where they engage themselves, in case they will be elected, to promote the use of free software through their political activity.