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John Weathersby is head of the Mississippi-based Open Source Software Institute (OSSI), which earlier this year signed its second Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Navy. This is the lightly-edited transcript of an IM conversation we had with Weathersby last month.

Think Linux lacks for good multimedia creation and editing applications? Think again. In the world of sound editing, Audacity is powerful and easy to use, and it's free software. Howard Wen explores the design, features, and future of Audacity.

A look at what's changed and what's new in Csound5, the major overhaul to the long-standing Csound software sound synthesis language.

There is unease within the Linux kernel development project following Linus Torvalds' decision to stop using the BitKeeper source code management system. Torvalds reportedly decided to start using BitKeeper three years ago because it made him much more productive. It helped him to deal with large numbers of kernel patches submitted by developers, who often got fed up waiting for a patch to be evaluated.

The increasing number of files that are showing up on computers make traditional heirarchical file management systems harder and harder to use, regardless of platform. One group in the KDE Project believes they may be onto the solution with the context-based file management system known as Tenor.

CNET News.com is reporting that IBM is looking for a Mozilla Firefox programmer. The position involves "enhancing the Mozilla Firefox Web browser with new features complimentary to IBM's On Demand middleware stack." According to the article, IBM says that the successful candidate will make contributions to the Firefox project.

Rapid git development continues, though most discussions have moved from the lkml to a new git mailing list.

The SCO Group CEO reveals that the company's been made aware of Sun's plans to open-source Solaris and approves of them.

German court supports effort to enforce the General Public License, which governs countless projects in the free and open-source software realms.

A patent filed by IBM has prompted PostgreSQL developers to rewrite an algorithm, even though IBM says it is opening up many of its patents for the open source community

Following the first and second parts of this series, here are a couple more worthwhile Firefox extensions.

Projects hope a taste of one possible future will spur people to action Developers are using shock tactics to persuade the open source community to get involved in the campaign against software patents.

The company's revenue dropped $2.5 million first quarter to first quarter, and the company still doesn't know if it will be permitted to continue trading in Nasdaq. Its CEO also announced that the company no longer sees any problem with Sun open-sourcing Solaris.

Mercadona, one of Spain’s leading supermarket chains, is deploying Red Hat Linux software on 10,000 desktops.

Novell has been named as the South African Receiver of Revenue's open source solution provider. Last month, SARS called for submissions from open source solution providers for end-to-end enterprise-level Linux system software.

Via and XGI say they hope to increase the number of Linux platforms that are compatible with their hardware.

The primary goal of Linux desktop operation is to give users access to typical desktop applications -- word processors, spreadsheets, Web browsers, etc. An alternative exists to this configuration, though: thin client computing. In many respects, thin client computing is very old; the typical mainframe model, with a large central server and many dumb terminals attached to it, closely resembles thin client computing. Thin clients, though, give users the ability to run GUI programs. Before going too far with a desktop Linux deployment, you may want to consider a Linux thin client solution. It's not for everybody, but some sites can benefit from it.

The latest version of RHEL 4, still being beta tested, will make use of the 2.6 kernel and will be compatible with the upcoming AMD and Intel dual-core x86 server processors.

The Organic Valley farming cooperative had a Web site and email for its member farms, but it desperately needed a corporate-style intranet to facilitate collaboration and better communication. That's where the open source MetaDot project came in, replacing phpWebSite as the sole point of reference for Organic Valley's employees and members. Now that the organization is familiar with open source software, it's finding open source alternatives may be the answer to more software dilemmas.

Neither SCO Group's copyright claims on select Linux code nor Microsoft will be able to slow the spread of Linux in the enterprise over the next two years, an analyst for Gartner Research said.