"It is utterly astonishing to me that people who are forever going on about "free speech" and the like would now suggest that a medium whose purpose is to cover things, Linux should not cover anything inconveniently embarrassing or that casts a bad light on what they wish people would believe, as they do, about Linux. This suggests to me that these poor, real-life-less specimens are merely conduits, who devote little or no time to thought and absolutely none to independent thought -- whose next original notion will be their first," says Dennis Powell.

"It should be a truism that the scientific literature exists to disseminate scientific knowledge, and that scientific journals exist to facilitate the process. It therefore follows that rules for use of the scientific literature should be designed to help achieve that goal. The modern technology for scientific publishing is the World Wide Web. Articles should be distributed in non-proprietary formats, with open access for all. And everyone should have the right to `mirror' articles; that is, to republish them verbatim with proper attribution," says Richard Stallman.

Use of the GNU GPL may be based more on fear than on freedom, but that fear is justified says Evan Leibovitch.

The same week that smoldering hostilities in the GNOME development community burst forth, a longtime KDE developer has opened fire on that desktop project. The two desktops have long engaged in heated competition, which now seems to entail which can do the most damage not to the other but to itself. Both disputes highlight potential problems in large development projects staffed in whole or part by unpaid volunteers, and the KDE dispute underlines the ambiguities surrounding the rights of individual developers involved in such projects.

According to the Meta Group analysts organizations should focus on mainstream environments and treat Linux as a tactical solution for embedded systems and special uses, unless they are operating in countries with a large and available skilled IT labor pool that does not demand high wages. They say that Linux is unlikely to displace Windows or the proprietary versions of Unix now used on virtually all desktops and servers in commercial environments.

"Last week I was flamed by dozens of Linux users for simply reporting on the results of a recent survey of Australian IT managers that indicated that usage of Windows 2000 is growing strongly, and that Unix is declining a little. Linux users often get religious about their operating system, and they don't like facts that are contrary to their prejudices. Since time immemorial religion has provided people with a rationale for their existence and meaning to lives that would otherwise comprise little more than the proverbial sham, misery and broken dreams.

There's more to Microsoft's recent attacks on the open-source movement than mere rhetoric: Linux's popularity could hinder the software giant in its quest to gain control of a server market that's crucial to its long-term goals.

Librenix has a piece on Microsoft's oposed "Smart Tags," (the author is against them and proposes a way in which they'd be more palatable) and a more interesting bit of related information, which is the license under which all the site's content is provided: changes to presentation details allowed by the W3C HTML specification are permitted, but "reproduction in a web browser" in such a way that URL's are added or links otherwise provided are not.

"Journalists who know Linux and free software systems? There aren't any, not in the mainstream media, and there may never be any, because of the nature of commercial publishing. Commercial publishers, by the nature of the very game, have to chase markets, and Linux is a technology, not a market. On the other hand, there's journalistic ethics. That means printing stuff that no one paid you to write, but that you think represents the closest thing to "the truth" that can be discovered on deadline with minimal expense," says Henry Kingman.

"Every so often I encounter someone who is using Linux but who hasn't taken part in any of the mailing lists. These groups are missing a lot and they're denying other users a lot. So, if you're new to Linux, or if you've been using it awhile but haven't found out that it's more than just an operating system and applications, consider this to be both advice and an invitation: Look around at the various mailing lists, then join as many as your mail-reading time can handle and participate in the community. You, and it, will be richer for it," says Dennis Powell.