Hello everbody. The title says it all. The good people at SCALE (Southern California Linux Expo offered our readers a super-discount: just mention the coupon code FSM8X and receive a 40% (forty percent!) discount on your SCALE tickets! Merry Christmas, and enjoy SCALE!

The computing world is always very unpredictable. That must be why there is a small number of people who make large amounts of money from it: they are in the right (unpredictable) place, at the right (unpredictable) time. Who would have ever guessed that Javascript, a simple scripting language initially thought as a simple means to make web pages “cooler”, would become… drum roll… the world’s new CPU?

I doubt anybody expected it. Even after seeing AJAX (which was ironically started by Microsoft…), very few would have bet that Javascript would become quite so important. Javascript is the only really widespread, multiplatform solution the modern IT world has seen. And yet, it made it. Google Documents is an office suite which runs in your browser — and it’s not even the best one. And that’s only the beginning: the world is absolutely full of software — and I am talking about full blown software — which will run for you wherever you are.

The recent announcement of Zenoss of their new EC2 module got my attention. Everybody talks about the cloud, complain about it, fear it, snub it… and then some companies (and people) write free software that works with this cloud and spin some amazing things.

I talked to Brandon Whichard at Zenoss about it, and we ended up having a very interesting conversation about monitoring, the community, the cloud, and the future.

EC2 stands for “Elastic compute”; think of it as a normal Virtual Hosting system, with a difference: you pay according to how many resources you actually use.

A lot of people at the moment are immensely intrigued by Google Chrome OS. I won’t hide that I am one of them. Google promises a much needed shift in the way small computers work. Problems like software updates, backups, installation, maintenance, viruses, have plagued the world for too long: a shift is way overdue. To me, however, the change about to happen shows us what many people have refused to believe for a long time: KDE and GNOME shot each other dead. I write this knowing full well that I am going to make a lot of people angry. This might be the first time a writer receives very angry responses from both camps — KDE and GNOME’s users might actually (finally?) join arms and fight just to show everybody how wrong I am!

I interviewed Nick Ali, one of the great minds behind the Atlanta LinuxFest 2009. See what he has to tell us, and why you shouldn’t miss it if you’re lucky enough to be nearby on September 19th, 2009!

UPDATE: as it turned out, I was shipped a faulty item by Dell. They changed the motherboard, and things worked smoothly. However, at the end of this exercise I learned that the selection of machines available with Ubuntu is still quite small — hopefully they will extend it soon

Dear Michael,

I have been a fan of yours for many years — since I was a kid in fact! I watched as you created Dell, one of the first (“the” first?) companies that sold computers by mail order. I watched you become wealthy, successful, and then retire, only to come back to Dell to remind its managers what they seemed to have forgotten: listen to your customers. I watched you embrace GNU/Linux; I remember thinking: I wonder if people realise what this will actually mean. I am sure he does.

So, here I am: I bought an Inspiron Mini 10. I have no choice but return it. And now I can’t stop wondering: how could Michael Dell get it just so wrong?

A couple of months ago, Free Software Magazine went through what you’d call a “rough patch” in terms of hosting: 3FN, which hosted FSM, was effectively shut down by the FTC in the United States. Many companies had their backup servers on 3FN’s networks — and therefore lost everything. We were lucky enough to have a full backup over in Europe. So, we quickly moved everything to CariNet. What’s the aftermath of this adventure?

Free software is definitely going strong in some areas, especially in the server market. However, there are other areas where free software and free protocols have failed. Internet based voice and video communication is one of those areas. The market is basically fully owned by Skype, a piece of proprietary software based on a proprietary (and abusive) protocol in the hands the same company that runs eBay. Free software advocates have been saying “what if Skype was discontinued?” for years. Then I read about eBay considering shutting Skype down. Pardon?

This article was originally published on “2008-06-15 13:09:55 +0000”. I re-read it, and decided that it deserved to be re-published in Free Software Magazine as a tribute to those individual who made GNU/Linux possible. Every field has its own key individuals who donated much of their time to the ideas they believed in. Each one of them is a reminder that it’s up to individuals to make a difference — and to make history. Their work affects large chunks of the world’s population, and bring amazing changes to the way we see and experience the world.

The free software world has its own heroes. You probably know a lot of them already; if you don’t, you probably use the results of their work on a daily basis.

This article is both a tribute to them, and a summary to those people who are new to the free software world.

A small revolution in the IT world is about to happen, and we are about to witness it. Microsoft Windows’ domination has been challenged many times: first by OS/2 (failed), then Apple (failed), then Java and network computing (failed), then GNU/Linux and Ubuntu (failed, so far). And now, Google’s Chrome OS. After such a long list of failures, what makes me think that this latest attempt will actually succeed?

There is a list of factors. Let’s have a look.

#1: The Operating system is no longer important. In 2009, people develop for the Web, full stop

This point is very important.

I recently installed KnowledgeTree for a small office that needed a piece of document management software. Document management is one of those things: you don’t think you need one until you actually see one. I noticed that it’s free software, financed by private extensions. O got curious and managed to talk to Daniel Chalef, the CEO of KnowledgeTree.

Hello Daniel. Please introduce yourself to our readers and tell them about your background!

I’m the CEO of KnowledgeTree Inc., a commercial open source software vendor.

I had the pleasure to talk to Amanda McPherson, one of the minds behind LinuxCon, “LinuxCon is a new annual technical conference that will provide an unmatched collaboration and education space for all matters Linux”. Where and where: September 21 - 23 2009, Portland.

Amanda, you are one of the people behind the LinuxCon, one of the most exciting Linux conferences out there. Can you give us some details?

Linuxcon is a new conference created by the Linux Foundation and the Linux community.

GNU/Linux is slowly invading everybody’s everyday life. I won’t say “The year of the GNU/Linux desktop is here”. Been there, done that. But, GNU/Linux is definitely imposing its presence — think about Android, or the number of people who are currently using GNU/Linux as their main desktop.

And yet, software installation in GNU/Linux is broken. No, not broken… it’s terribly broken. Why is that, and what can be done to fix it?

Greetings everybody!

At the moment, we are looking for tutorial-style articles for Free Software Magazine.

Some of our readers pointed out that our magazine is focussing more and more on “opinions”, and we are forgetting how to get our hands dirty.

I have been talking about the convergence of telephony and desktop computing for years. Nowadays, more and more companies are announcing small devices (“netbooks”) that will run Android — and we are not talking about phones here. Is this the beginning of a new revolution? Or maybe not?

This article is necessarily going to be short: I am busy restoring our server from a backup from the 2nd of June. Why? Because 3FN was shut down by the FTC; and yes, 3fn is the hosting company we used and were sponsored by.

We are now hosting the magazine with the angels at OpenHosting, which in this case were a life saver.

The 2009 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ‘09) will take place June 14-19, 2009, in San Diego, CA.

Our friends at USENIX asked us to spread the word… so here we are. This is not a full blog post, but it’s definitely worth knowing about USENIX — especially if you are in California next month!

I am always interested when a company uses GNU/Linux to create really, really useful services. When that company is in your own town, and I get to spend time with the person who created it and made it successful, I get even more excited! Liam Bennett manages eConfirm Inc, an Australian company that offers business SMS text messaging services, based on GNU/Linux. Here’s what Liam has to say about his experience with GNU/Linux and free software in general.

TM: Thank you for answering my questions, Liam. You are a boot-strapping a company using GNU/Linux. Can you tell me what you do, in simple words?

A little while ago, while talking in the #drupal mailing list, I showed my latest creation to one of the core developers there. His reaction was “Wow, I am always surprised what people use Drupal for”. His surprise is somehow justified: I did create a site for a bunch of strippers in Perth, strippers in Sydney, strippers in Brisbane, strippers in Melbourne. Yes, I would classify the link quite work-safe.

Update: since writing this article, I have updated the system so that the whole booking process happens online. I will update the article accordingly!

The world of computers has changed. Sub-notebooks are becoming immensely popular, mobile phones based on Google’s Android software are about to come out (T-Mobile have just announced their G1 will launch on October 22), and computers are looking increasingly like small devices that fit in our pockets. The end of 2008 might see the dawn of a new revolution in the computer industry and in people’s lives. Maybe 2009 will be remembered as the year when the “world went mobile”. What does this mean for the (free and non-free) software industry? Where will we be, technologically and (more importantly) culturally? Where will the market (and the money) be?