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Coders who give up their spare time to contribute to open source projects are the virtual equivalent of lifeboat men, according to latest research from Demos.

We didn't release any new version of cdw - the console and GTK based cd burning front-end - for a long time. The latest version - 0.2.3 - released on 15-05-2004. I would like to know how many people are using it and would use it in the future. I wouldn't work on development of cdw just for my sake.

The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is the formalized incarnation of the Jabber instant message protocol. But what exactly does that formalization mean? And why should you care?

A coalition of service providers claims it will shake up the open source market by offering an alternative to the larger vendors. It also aims to counter the claims made by Microsoft that open source is the more expensive option. The Open Source Consortium, a grouping of more than 60 companies has been established to offer, what it claims is an unbiased "proprietary-vendor free" voice for all organisations contemplating an Open Source roll-out.

Hackers defaced SCO Group's Web site on Monday, targeting the company's controversial claims to elements of the Linux operating system.

Time for a shocker. Device support under Linux is excellent. No, really. We have been trained to assume that anything and everything just works with Windows but that isn't even remotely true. From time to time, even Windows users must visit hardware vendors' Web sites to download a driver. Furthermore, some hardware works with one version of Windows and not another so having all your hardware work under Windows is far from being a given (probably closer to a myth). When running Linux, the sheer number of things that will work "out of the box" without you having to search for and install drivers is nothing short of impressive and, quite frankly, beats your old OS hands down. No contest.

OpenOffice.org's namesake suite turned 4 last month, and in a sign of just how far the open-source productivity suite has come, a commercially supported version of the software for Windows is now available.

The joined efforts of SableVM JVM hackers and GNU Classpath hackers finally allowed Eclipse 3 to run on SableVM!. According to what Etienne told me, he was running Eclipse 3 on his Debian PowerPC for a few hours, including editing, compiling and running simple java programs. And all that using SableVM as the only Java Virtual Machine on his laptop.

SUN CEO Jonathan Schwartz's claim that his Java Community Process is the only true open source has greatly miffed the open source movement. Eric Raymond, president of the Open Source Initiative, has hit out in an open letter that Schwartz's claims that Linux didn't even get a vote when it came to being close to the open source ideals.

The Commonwealth Department of Veterans Affairs is considering installing open-source software on its desktop computers as it continues a wide-ranging technology revamp that has taken in almost all of its information systems.

Paul Andrews of the Seattle Times has used Linux for three years and makes numerous cites from places like Consumer Reports that offers Linux as a Windows alternative.

Flash Linux is a compact distribution designed to run off 256Mb USB keys. It includes hardware detection, auto configuration, a fairly complete Gnome 2.8 desktop, and associated office tools. Ideal if you want to try out Gnome 2.8 without touching your current system with over 50Mb of storage left after installation. Note that this is a first release, it should however be pretty usable and stable.

This review is a light-hearted look at Sef's install of Lycoris Desktop L/X 1.4, and what went right, what went wrong, and how it turned out.

Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system, weighs in on the upcoming challenges facing GPL Version 3 in an e-mail interview with eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli.

Earlier this month, veteran Windows-centric columnist John C. Dvorak wrote a half-serious, half-facetious article called The Ten Axioms of Modern Computing in which he complains about common computer issues. What he and far too many other people don't realize is that most of their problems could be solved by removing Windows from their machines and installing a free software operating system like GNU/Linux. Let's take a point by point analysis of how Dvorak's gripes have little to do with the majority of his computing environment.

We've all heard of Windows Media Center, the OS based purely on playing movies, music, and watching TV. While there have been tutorials on how to create something just like that using Linux, GeeXboX makes all of that extremely easy. Well most of it anyway.

Fujitsu, Hitachi, and NEC have released their jointly developed messaging software as open source.

Review: Red Hat's latest release offers a raft of improvements, but update tools still lag.

Hello Fedora Users! The has been updated for Fedora Core 3! This means that it has some new questions answered for Fedora Core 3 users, and it also has a new yum.conf for Fedora Core 3.

Karl Fischer takes a walk through the latest version of Gnome, version 2.8, to illustrate a few of the best new features of this very popular desktop environment.