I encourage people to download & use OpenOffice.org in one of it's derivatives. I'm pleased when people file bugs, help with the QA burden, promote the projet etc. However, in a Free Software project the primary production is developing and improving the software - ie. hacking. So the question is: how is OpenOffice.org doing in this area ?

Dave Thomas, programming book author and Ruby evangelist presented the keynote at RailsConf2008; "There's a sound that no presenter wants to hear, and that's dead silence. And that's what greeted me when I made a suggestion in my RubyConf keynote [...]. I think by the end of the talk, though, most people were convinced." This is one of the best programming topic presentations I have ever seen.

Today, I read about a new netbook (running Linux, of course) that stores its operating system on a USB key, presumably so that you can take it out and bring your file and settings to any computer. The first time I skimmed the article, I misread it and didn't see that it ran Linux. Later, I realized that it must run Linux, since you just couldn't do that with Windows.

Many public administrations already use open source Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to let citizens look at public geographic data trough dedicated Web sites. Others use the same software to partially open the data gathering process: they let citizens directly add geographic information to the official, high-quality GIS databases by drawing or clicking on digital maps.

Lead kernel developer Linus Torvalds announced the official release of Linux 2.6.28 on Wednesday. The new version introduces some noteworthy changes that will put the kernel in a strong position for growth and advancement in the coming year. This latest release follows a few months after version 2.6.27, which was released in October.

"Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 has been released. Release notes are available. This post lists the improvements in Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 over 2.0.0.18. This list encompasses almost every single known fix that went into this release..."

Starting about the time that Bill Gates wrote his infamous Letter to Hobbyists, the commercial software industry has sought to control and restrict access to source code. Before that time, code wasn’t explicitly free, but it was often freely exchanged. The rise of the commercial software industry put an end to that.

I've been experimenting with Ubuntu for a few months now, and it is a great operating system. With netbooks on the rise, and increased notoriety, more and more average consumers are trying it out. As far as it has come, there are still problems with hardware and software incompatibility that will keep many users away.