Interview with Richard Stallman about various topics; about the difference between the free software movement and open source, why Stallman rejects the term "intellectual property", the GPLv3 and Torvalds view on it, Microsofts patent claims, and about the Microsoft-Novell deal.

"A few months back, the self-styled open source advocate Eric S. Raymond made a grand announcement about switching Linux distributions and moving from Fedora to Ubuntu."

Groklaw's Sean Daly had an opportunity to meet Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, at OpenForum Europe last week. Mr. Cerf, known as the Father of the Internet because of being the co-designer with Robert Kahn of TCP/IP protocols and the basic architecture of the Internet, was gracious enough to answer some email questions Sean propounded regarding the future of the Internet, standards in general, and OOXML in particular. Like many others this week, Cerf has been giving the standards process considerable thought, and he concludes in connection with OOXML that "Internet users deserve better handling of global Internet standards."

Notorious open source advocate and author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric S. Raymond brings colorful acumen to any open source discussion. Here's how Raymond views the continually evolving open source landscape.

Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, has, along with others like Richard Stallman, literally changed the world of software forever.

If you ask me who's the proudest hacker in the world, I would say that it's Eric S. Raymond. ESR, as he is often called, is a computer programmer and open source software evangelist. He is also a well-known author and has been very influential in giving the term 'hacker' a positive image.

This was amusing and odd. The presenter mistakenly gives the award to the "Free Software Association". The donation was modest but the cardboard check was huge.

Upon receiving the award, Stallman said "Giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is sort of like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Fleet."

ERIC RAYMOND writes in his bog [sic] that his "resolve to treat Microsoft like any other license submitter is being sorely tested."

Linus Torvalds is remarkable, not only for being the technical genius who wrote Linux, but for then being able to inspire and lead an enormous team of people to devote their free time to work on the operating system and bring it to maturity. We sent Richard Morris off to interview Linus, and find out more.