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!

I had the pleasure to work with Brian Jones, renowned free software technical writer, last year when I was working on TUX Magazine. We met again by accident recently and, while talking with him, I asked “What about an interview?” Well, here it is!

TM: Hello Brian. Many of our readers already know your name and have read your articles or book. Can you briefly introduce yourself?

JR: Hey Matthew, to start if you could introduce yourself and tell us a bit about OpenedHand.

MA: Hi. I’m a 32 year old father, husband, free software hacker and boss man of OpenedHand. I live in London, UK. Beyond making Linux better on devices my other interests include modern design, comics (a big fan of the likes of Ed Brubaker, Alan Moore, etc.) and table tennis (current office champion—first rule of OpenedHand: let the boss win at ping-pong). I’m the author of various pieces of free software, including Matchbox, Xephyr and most recently Clutter.

I read a piece in which the author criticized the free software world for not being innovative enough; needless to say this angered me, so I decided to try and demonstrate that this is not the case. Over the next few weeks I’m going to post a series of e-mail interviews with developers who are driving forward the ideas and expectations of the computer industry as a whole, in new and exciting ways! This week’s interview is with Havoc Pennington, who’s currently working on a number of great projects related to the idea of an “online desktop”: read on to find out more!

In most industries, innovation comes from big companies that invest large amounts of money in equipment and research. The IT industry is different: the only real investment is a PC—and copious amounts of time necessary to study and research. (Without free software it could have been a very different story today, since we could live in a world where you couldn’t program without forking out several thousands of dollars just for a compiler. Does anybody remember how much the first version of Visual C++ cost?)

In computers, the most important leaps forward are often made by single (outstanding) individuals. I’ve had a chance to talk to Arturo “Buanzo” Busleiman, who wrote Enigform. If Enigform becomes a standard, it could change the way everybody logs onto their internet banking sites and more. He’s the best person to talk about Enigform… so, here he is.

Mark Shuttleworth is going to be the next guest on my podcast where the idea is that YOU are the ones who ask the questions. To make this work we need your questions: send them in to yourquestions@questionsplease.org or read on for more contact information.

I was talking to Russel Ossendryver recently, WorldLabel’s owner. After exchanging a few words, and being a little shocked by what I heard, I told him “Russel,would you like me to actually interview you formally?” He was a littlehesitant at first. However, in the end we decided that current eventsneeded as much exposure as possible. So, this is a friendly privateconversation that turned into an interview.

Here it is!

TM: What is Worldlabel?

This entry is first a plea for help. I enjoy reading and listening to interviews with people who have interesting and exciting things to say about their passions. My attention was recently directed to a web site named Questions Please…, where Jonathan Roberts informs us he has an inside line to free software luminaries Richard Stallman, Jeremy Allison, and Jeff Waugh. So what is my plea?

Questions Please…