I've found myself falling in love all over again with various KDE apps as I use their KDE4 incarnations. One of those apps is Gwenview, by Aurélien Gâteau. In KDE4 one of the common goals shared by various development teams was to improve the look, feel and usability of our apps. Did Aurélien succeed? Now it certainly looks better. But is it as functional? As easy to use?

It used to be there were only a couple of players in town who combed through software code, specifically looking for open source packages and licenses: Black Duck and Palamida. A year ago, we figured there was plenty of room for additional players, but we had no idea how many companies would end up coming to the open source code scanning table.

"Interesting article in LinuxWorld about the future of free software by Eben Moglen... «...If you’ve become dependent on a commons for whatever role in your business, then what you need is commons management. You don’t strip-mine the forest; you don’t fish every fish out of the sea. And, in particular, you become interested in conservation and equality. You want the fish to remain in the sea, and you don’t want anybody else overfishing. So you get interested in how the fisheries are protected...» ..."

"Reading Eben Moglen’s keynote address, “Freeing the Mind: Free Software and the Death of Proprietary Culture,” I felt a bit like Richard Stallman while he worked to replace UNIX with GNU: reaching the same destination but apprehensive about the other guy’s route. Moglen, a law professor and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, discusses free software v. the behemoths of software largely in moral terms..."

With the recent release of version 4.0, the KDE open source project has garnered a lot of international attention. One of KDE's lead developers, and best known personality, Aaron J Seigo is in Australia to speak at this year's Linux.conf.au on his vision for better desktop computing. Computerworld spoke with Seigo, a native of Calgary, Canada, about his view of the world and how a little bit of innovation will permanently change how people interact with software.

"As we enter into our final hours of our yearly membership drive, I wanted to thank all our supporters and welcome our nearly 450 new members! I'm happy to report that this has been the most successful membership drive since we launched the program in 2002. We are still 50 short of our goal of 500 new associate members. So, here's the challenge for today. Please consider..."

With any paradigm shift, it is difficult to see the new world from the old one, even though it is glaringly obvious once you’ve crossed over. Empirical evidence is one way to bridge the gap. To that end, I want to show some solid evidence for the “impossible” things that commons-based peer production (CBPP) has already accomplished—things that the old conventional wisdom would tell us “can’t be done”. This week, I’ll look at what is probably the most obvious case: free software.

It's been a few years since the Free software, Turn based strategy game: The Battle for Wesnoth, made it's humble beginnings. Ever since then, little by little, not only has the code and game play been improving but the artwork has made huge leaps in quality.

So take a dive in the world of Wesnoth and see for yourself some of the best pieces of original/traditional art the Free software world has produced.