In just a few days, the FCC will close its deliberations on Net Neutrality to outside comment.

If the giant telcos, like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, get their way, the FCC will abandon Net Neutrality and allow them to play favourites with big online companies who are willing to pay them the biggest bribes for favoured online treatment.

This will mean that everyone who can’t pay will receive prejudiced online treatment compared to those who can.

Here’s the first cryptic crossword from Free Software Magazine. Most clues should lead you to words somehow associated with free software, but one or two “everyday” words have been slipped in to act as decoys :-)

We started Free Software Magazine about 3 years ago with two goals in mind: publish fantastic articles about free software, and pay people to write good articles. We believe we managed to reach the first goal. As far as payment, it took us a lot longer than expected.Our authors right now get a book from one of our sponsoring publishers. But, before now, we never managed to pay cash for articles.

This has finally changed.

Free Software Magazine now officially pays for articles. I shamelessly admit that I am writing this sentence with intense satisfaction.

Okay so our new forums are going well so far, but we decided we needed a forum dedicated to asking all those difficult questions. You know, the ones everyone has an opinion on. So here it is The big free software questions. Here’s a list of the topics up for debate so far:

• Is this much choice really a good thing?
• Emulating proprietary software - should we do it?

As you all know, we are now proud to have a Drupal 5 website, and we are happily installing features left, right and centre for your enjoyment. And our most recent new adventure in features is… FORUMS! That’s right, ladies and gentlemen… want to know the answer to a free software question that’s been bugging you? Want to help a newbie? Want to engage with likeminded individuals? Look no further than the third menu item from the left, just below the Free Software Magazine logo! It’s that easy!

So, want to know what’s on offer?

Dear readers,

We are developing a new, funky Karma module for Drupal. We are doing it for Free Software Magazine, although we will release it under the GPL.

However, we need help. Tony, who is programming the module, doesn’t know anything about Javascript and the module really needs to have some basic Ajax abilities. Basically, users need to be able to rate a comment by picking an item in a select box, and the server needs to receive the information without reloading the page.

I’ve been telling Tony for a long time now that we need to be more transparent. You know… let our readers know what’s really going on behind the scenes. But he gets so busy with all his work (until recently he’s been working three full-time jobs… ah the life of a workaholic) and I’ve been reluctant to start something that will mean even more work for me (ah the life of a slacker).

Issue 16 of FSM came out a few days ago. The PDF version went out as well, but… out of the window! A lot of people, including myself, cried and asked for it to come back.

I am now writing this open letter to Tony, asking him to just discard many of the requests that wanted the PDF back.

I am the founder of Free Software Magazine. My role has always been important, but you must keep in mind that FSM exists thanks to several key people who worked hard on this project.

My latest editorial has received countless comments about us dropping the PDFs. You can see them yourself - some of them are reasonable, while other were along the lines of “I want a PDF version, and I want it right now. If not, I will never be back to this site ever again”.

Dear readers,

As you know, we have been working very hard over the last 2 years todeliver the best magazine ever. Now, we need your help.

We are proud of what we achieved. We now have more than 750 articles onour web site, and all of them are released under a free license. Manyarticles are key references for Linux users and developers. Right now,we feel that we are flying.

However, as I said, we need your help. If you have a blog, or if youknow somebody with a popular web site, please ask them to have a look here.