Over at Sphere of Networks, I published a text that tries to give a simple overview of the workings of information production in the age of the internet, covering everything from free software to free culture. This article is a slightly modified version of another chapter of this text. This time I will show you how the internet enabled a new form of information production: commons-based peer productions, like Wikipedia or most free software today. What is free content and why is it so important to people collaborating over the internet?

Free software has many benefits: you can get more secure software, faster updates, lots of tutorials and, definitely, a new way of making software and software that builds communities. From this, the next logical step was Open Hardware.

Excitement in the Open Graphics community is quite high as it approaches its first production run of the FPGA-based “Open Graphics Development” board, known as “OGD1”. It will be available for pre-sale this month with the first units expected to ship soon thereafter. The board is targeted at hardware developers, with the specific goal of supporting development and testing of designs for a fully-documented consumer Open Hardware Graphics Card to be implemented using an ASIC (thus resolving one of the biggest obstacles to free software on the desktop).

Free software has much to offer non-profit organizations (NGOs). If you are reading this, you are probably a member or participant of an NGO, and I hope I can show you why free software and open standards are important for your organisation. Or maybe you are a free software supporter who’d like to see a change in a social organisation near you. In any case, I will try to give you a few arguments in favour of free software, along with some practical information on how to successfully face a migration process from proprietary software.

Bob Young, former CEO of Red Hat, former publisher of Linux Journal, current head of lulu.com and a professional football team shares his thoughts and views of Linux.

Eric S. Raymond is author of one of the definitive books of the open source world “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”. In this interview Mr. Raymond talks about a number of the projects he is involved in.

Richard M. Stallman has been a pivotal, and sometimes controversial figure in the free software movement. Mr. Stallman’s accomplishments have included, but are not limited to, the creation of the GNU Public License, the Free Software Foundation, and the GNU C compiler. Here Mr. Stallman shares his thoughts on a number of topics.

The first International Conference on Free Software, Technological Literacy and Solidarity Economy took place in Bogotá (Colombia) from 13th to 15th of November. More than 80 speakers and 600 assistants attended at the the Tequendama Hotel, a traditional meeting point in the city.

Over at Sphere of Networks, I published a text that tries to give a simple overview of the workings of information production in the age of the internet, covering everything from free software to free culture. This article is a slightly modified version of a chapter of this text. I will show how peer-to-peer file-sharing networks work and how Big Media tries to prevent this sharing by means of random lawsuits and by using DRM. What does this copyright war mean for consumers and for our culture as a whole?

This is a collection of tips&tricks written by Andrew Min and Gary Richmond. In this article:

• How to create a GNU/Linux live USB stick with SLAX (Andrew)—see below
• How to use Quake-style terminals on GNU/Linux (Andrew)
• How to take screenshots with Scrot (Gary)
• How to back up your Master Boot Record (MBR) (Gary)

This article describes the work in progress of applying Ubuntu Linux sensibly within an underfunded school, and as part of a wider well thought out and alternative educational structure. I shall emphasise best practices and try my best not to dwell too much on the underlying technologies.

The school

This is a collection of tips&tricks written by Gary Richmond and Andrew Min. In this article:

• How to get the best out of the history command in GNU/Linux (Gary)
• How to close down GNU/Linux safely after a system freeze with the SysRq key (Gary)
• How to find .debs (even if you think they don’t exist) (Andrew)
• How to kill processes (Andrew)

A first draft of this article has been sitting for months in my hard disk. I decided to finish it after reading that Microsoft will offer its operating system and office suite for $3 per machine to developing countries. That made me think of the way the giant software company “helps” these countries by giving licenses of its proprietary software almost for free, and that in turn made me think of free milk. Let me tell you about it.

The Nestlé boycott

When you are looking for a workstation or new desktop there are a seemingly infinite number of potential solutions available. So where do you start? Well if you are after a powerful AMD based computer then you might want to take a look at the Sun Ultra 20 M2, a workstation based around AMD Opteron 1200 dual-core CPU, and available at a surprisingly reasonable price.

Workstation or desktop?

When we enter the world of “free and open source software”, most of us will choose one or the other philosophy. This choice is usually made easy by the people that guide us when we enter this world. We are at a point where the philosophies behind free software, which have been heralded by Richard M. Stallman and others, are threatened; as more people make the jump away from proprietary operating systems, less of them know about these philosophies. Fewer people will weigh the decision for themselves.

What is the difference?

This article provides a real world perspective into why businesses move to and stick with free software. In this interview, Rob Fraser, from the premiere New Zealand open solutions company Egressive Limited (egressive.com), shares insights into why free software can benefit any business. The interview briefly covers: VPNs, spam filtration and risk mitigation, among other topics.

Programmers. The system administrators worship their bit twiddling capabilities. The users exchange vast quantities of beer for new features and tools. And the project managers sell their souls when they make the magic work. But inside the average programmer’s psyche are several demons that need exorcising.

Pride

Do you remember that old game that you used to play all the time? Do you still play it? It probably isn’t free software. Do you wish it was? Sometimes writing a clone of a game is a lot of work compared to the amount of work it takes to relicense one. Here is a story about how one group of people are going about freeing the game known as “Moria”.

Introduction

I recently started a new podcast where people like you and me have the chance to put questions to key people in our community. While doing that I discovered some aspects of our community that I feel are often over looked in the drive to find new users.

Why I did it

What is free software? Should you care and if so, why and what does it have to do with cakes and my mother?

My mother and computers