Ekiga is the most popular, free VoIP software available. When I asked the Ekiga team for an interview, there was a lot I didn’t know. For example, I had no idea I’d be interviewing quite so many people (coordination was quite a challenge!), and—more importantly—I didn’t know that so much knowledge would have been uncovered. Every single member had something important to say, and the result is an interview that becomes a unique insight into Ekiga, the VoIP world, free software development and team work.

Julien Puydt, Damien Sandras, Matthias Schneider, Yannick Defais, Jan Schampera, These guys know telephony. They were born with a directory in their pockets. This interview is not to be missed. Enjoy.

Many thanks to Gary Richmond for editing this epic interview

Nominate your entries for Free Software Magazine Awards 2008! To nominate a project, a person or a site, just leave a comment under this story or send an email with subject “Awards” to:

Nominations close on April, 30 2008. Hurry!

The core authors at Free Software Magazine will be the judges for the 2008 Free Software Magazine Awards.

I was lucky enough to catch Kurt Denke for a short interview. Kurt is actually on vacation right now; however, he still found some time to answer my questions. For those who have been living under a rock for the last week, Kurt Denke is the owner of Blue Jeans Cable; Monster Cable attacked Blue Jeans Cable on the basis of “Intellectual Property violations”. You should read Kurd Denke’s response. It’s a very enjoyable read, which makes you realise just how knowledgeable Kurt Denke is, on intellectual property law and on cables (!).

Here is the interview:

As some of you already know, I am the main developer for Drigg. I donated probably more than 1000 hours of my life to the Drigg project, because I believed in it. After reviewing existing CMSs out there, I believe that Drigg is the best system available today for people who want to create Digg-like sites (but, in fact, when people deploy Drigg they get fully functional Drupal sites…!). You can see my contributions to Drigg daily. One more programmer has joined Drigg, which is going right ahead.

However, Drigg’s community is still smaller than Pligg, its main competitor. Why?

Unless a small miracle happens, OOXML is a standard. What’s next?

(I withheld the release of this video in Free Software Magazine until I managed, with the help of a fantastic community member, to make it available in OGG format and in embedded video format. Thank you Michael Fötsch!)

Download it in OGG format

There are companies we love and respect. Google is one of them. Regardless of their mistakes, their jet, their priorities in terms of software releases, there is an “innate” trust.

But, is it safe to trust Google?

I am asking this because I got burned. Not by Google, but by Virgin Mobile Australia.

Dear readers,

There is some news. This is important news about Free Software Magazine, and it affects the community. Please spread the word far and wide, in your blogs, news hubs, social networking, and so on.

What’s the fuss about?

Well, all of our readers can now create contents in Free Software Magazine’s site, starting from now.

In this video, I try to answer the question “What is the free software community?” Comments, or even community posts in response to this, are most welcome!

Note: you will need a flash player to see this video. We are examining options. If you have success using Gnash, or know of a video service that is more free software friendly, please let us know!

About five years ago, it was clear to me that personal computers would disappear… in our pockets. Along many other analysts, I could see computers getting smaller and smaller, and mobile phones getting busier and busier. Eventually, my dream-prediction said, it wouldn’t quite be “one computer on every desk” but a much more exciting “one computer in every pocket, and one monitor/keyboard paid on every desk”.

We are getting there, and yet again GNU/Linux is missing that train.

The free and open source software community has witnessed, over and over again, how far a visit to the right government officials can go. Bill Gates seems to know the game, and what cards he should play in every occasion to “make things happen”.

Over the last few years, it was apparent to us that making good software and creating good standards was just not enough to fight such a strong political presence. How could the free and open source world fight this?

Here is the proposal, in a nutshell (for the lazy readers): creating a fund aimed at informing government officials and prime ministers in the world about free software, and making sure that they receive similar benefits as they would if they chose to push for a Microsoft contract.

I recently learned the news that Lenovo is entering the server market outside China.

As the editor of Free Software Magazine, the first question that came to mind was: “Will they run Linux?”. To my surprise, the answer was nowhere to be found.

Lenovo: hardly a Linux-friendly maker

Back in April 2007, Lenovo announced that it would “offer a wide selection of low- to high-end machines be loaded with Linux software from Novell Inc.”. I won’t comment the odd choice of GNU/LInux distribution, which is besides the point (I am an Ubuntu fan, and am convinced that any new Linux desktop user should be given Ubuntu for a number of reasons). What I do want to point out, is that some ten months later those laptops are nowhere to be seen.

Over the last few years, I’ve come to accept the fact that regardless of my attempts to quit this job, I am fundamentally a programmer. I wrote a book about security, I am the Editor In Chief of Free Software Magazine, but in the end I am still just a programmer. A lucky one, I must admit.

I had the chance to interview Thomas Hansen, who recently announced the Gaia Programming Contest (€10,000 reward). Here are his enlightening answers!

TM: Hello Thomas. Please tell us something about you and about the company running the contest!

Free software (eventually) works better than proprietary software; why?

Making dramatic statements always implies a need to “back” them (or “prove” them) with facts, data, statistics. However, a statement like “Free software works better than proprietary software” is so broad, anybody can prove it and disprove it at will. It depends on which angle you take, which area, and what your comparison terms are. However, I would like to add an important keyword to that sentence: “Free software works better than proprietary software”. That easily-missed word shyly hiding in brackets makes all the difference.

I was happily hanging out in the sysadmin room of a major ISP around here in Western Australia (no, I wasn’t meant to be there, if you really want to know!). Steve, the senior sysadmin in charge of the place, showed me a computer screen (running Vista, but I won’t comment on that) and said “Oh yeah, I’m sure you know about this…”. “Yeah, I know Google maps” I answered. He looked at me embarrassed. “Err… actually, we use Zenoss server monitoring here… look close. That’s our VPN!” It was a map of their server in Australia. There were green lines between them.

Dave Mohyla is the president and founder of dtidata.com, a hard drive recovery facility based in Tampa, Florida.

TM: Nice meeting you Dave. Please introduce yourself to our readers…

Hi Tony, nice to meet you too, I am Dave Mohyla President and founder of dtidata.com, Inc

TM: Where are you based? What does your company do?

DTI Data recovery is based in South Pasadena, Florida which is a suburb of Tampa. We have been here for over 10 years. We operate a bio-metrically secured class 100 clean room where we perform hard drive recovery on all types of hard disks, from laptop hard drives to multi drive RAID systems.

I recently read an interview with Bill Hilf [1] (thanks to a link from Groklaw).As I read it, I realised that it needed clarifications to anybody left wondering whether Mr. Hilf’s answers are indeed objective. This article will go through the most interesting questions and answers, and will try to clarify some important points

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of interviews with major GNU/Linux distribution lead developers. This interview is with Clement Lefebvre the lead developer of Linux Mint and he talks with me about his project, development, the community, and his views on free vs open source software.

TM: Clement, first of all please introduce yourself to our readers! Where are you from? What do you do?

Centipede Networks has recently entered a partnership with BSD Perimeter to offer commercial support for two important free software projects, pfSense and m0n0wall. I had a chance to talk to Jeff Starkweather (CEO of Centipede Networks), Chris Buechler (BSD Perimiter’s CTO) and Scott Ullrich (Chief Architect at BSD Perimiter).

TM: Hello everybody, and thank you for answering my questions! Jeff, Chris, Scott please introduce yourselves and your companies to our readers.

Joshua N Pritikin has recently started a peer-review service based on free software he developed. Being the editor of a magazine about free software, the idea immediately intrigued me. So, I asked Joshua a few questions. Here are his answers.

TM: Hello Joshua. You’ve been involved in the free software community for quite some time… please introduce yourself to our readers!