One of the greatest problems hindering desktop Linux is its diversity.  With 800+ distributions, dozens of user interfaces and lots of different applications that do the same things, it's no secret that the Linux world is convoluted for developers and users.  But if Mark Shuttleworth has his way, the free-software community might become a little saner.

The International Free and Open Source Software Law Review (IFOSS L. Rev.) is a collaborative legal publication aiming to increase knowledge and understanding among lawyers about Free and Open Source Software issues. Topics covered include copyright, licence implementation, licence interpretation, software patents, open standards, case law and statutory changes.

In the last few years Ubuntu has emerged as the dominant force in the Linux Deskop field. During the recent Gran Canaria Desktop Summit Andreas Proschofsky had the chance to conduct the following interview with Shuttleworth. Sees good possibility of having a common meta-release cycle with Debian - Not sure if GNOME3 will make the next LTS

Benjamin Mako Hill argues that "a FLOSS program might be better or more reliable than proprietary software. Or it might be worse. [...] We can use empirical evidence to help bolster our arguments but we should be careful to not confuse these empirical claims with the principles themselves. They can, and sometimes will, be proven wrong."

Microsoft plays to win. As a result, it seems to regard any legal means as justified, and sometimes even strays outside the law, as the US anti-trust case demonstrated. In the context of marketplace rough-and-tumble, such aggressiveness is perhaps acceptable, but in other realms, there may be serious collateral damage.

"Move over, Richard, we'll take it from here" - that's the sort of message embraced by parts of the Mono community

I've written before about the curious case of South Korea, where the use of Internet Explorer and ActiveX is almost mandatory. I rather despaired of anything changing this situation, since there didn't seem to be any way to get around it from outside. And yet, remarkably, change is coming...