Nicholas Clark has been funded by the Perl Foundation to work on improving the Perl 5 Core. The term of the work is coming to an end and Clark is now seeking another $20,000 to continue the work. The Foundation is consulting with the community before making the final decision whether to go ahead with the extension which would see Clark devoting another 400 hours of dedicated work to the project.

Users question the privacy of Skype in an open letter to the heads of the company. Around 50 organizations and 60 individuals have signed the letter asking about Skype's security and privacy practices.

In TLWIR 51, I talked about how Coreboot might provide a solution to the confusion created by the Secure Boot fiasco. In the Linux Week in Review 52, I’ll talk about the need for a GNU/Linux reference system. In this “gold standard” system, all of the installed hardware would be known to work perfectly with the latest version of the Linux kernel.

Is it possible that the recent attempts to push secure boot onto computer users was a response to the growing hardware vendor support for coreboot back in 2011? This is only speculation on my part, but I suspect that this might be the case. Coreboot is a badly need solution that can restore freedom to PC users while updating the outdated PC BIOS technology.

The fight against DRM often pits us against some of the biggest companies and the most dominant ways of thinking in the technology business. What gives us the independence to speak out -- and the power to make your voice heard --is the support of our members. Now, we need your help to keep Defective by Design strong in 2013.

Four years ago I purchased my first Eee PC, an Eee PC 1000HD. This model Eee PC had a battery life rating of just 3 hours in Windows XP and it would only last 1 hour on battery using my distribution of choice at the time, Ubuntu.

BSDCan 2013 will be held 17-18 May, 2013 in Ottawa;Canada at the University of Ottawa. It will be preceded by two days of tutorials on 15-16 May.

Today, we focus on the present with interviews with two current KDE e.V. Board members, Lydia Pintscher and Cornelius Schumacher. On the bottom, we've got a nice puzzle for you..