"Dear Steve,

Hi, this is François, from Mandriva.

Like many, I was pretty shocked by the recent Microsoft-EU deal to settle the long-running investigation into interoperability issues. This was not so much because of the way Microsoft has used every kind of delaying tactic it could before eventually agreeing (for the nth time) to try harder in the future.

" It sounds impossible to me as well. But these really are the numbers from Mozilla, the open source project that started at Netscape, was morphed into a non-profit foundation, and most recently, the Mozilla Corporation – a taxable entity owned by the Mozilla Foundation.

After an interesting free software licensing event in Helsinki, I got thinking about licence complexity. At the conference, people had two types of questions (a) Why didn't GPLv3 additionally solve X problem? and (b) Why is it so long?

Imagine coming home from work and instead of plugging your phone to a wall where it will just dully wait to be recharged, plug it to your computer via USB and make a few phone calls, send a few SMS messages or tidy up your phone book all by using your computer keyboard and mouse, rather than that tiny phone keypad!

"Last month, Jimmy Wales and I announced a new project for iCommons called the ‘Free Culture House’ project. Inspired by similar initiatives around the world, we have come to recognise the growing importance of physical spaces in building the kinds of communities that will spread the global commons.

Analysis -- Over at our sister site LinuxDevices, we're always looking at small, embedded-Linux systems. While reviewing Freespire recently on a Mini koobox, an Apple Mini-sized system, I began to wonder, Just how small do full-featured, Linux-powered PCs come?

The successful web sites today already have communities of interest.