I've just been through a series of discussions with various people about how to predict success of Free Software projects and what factors predict success. I emailed a list of experienced Free Software/Open Source developers/leaders/gurus and compiled their responses. Yes, it's raw - very raw. This also appears on my site.

If you are using Microsoft Office 97 or 2000, every file you create is stamped with a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID). This number matches the MAC address of your Ethernet card. It is unique to each and every ethernet card ever made. This means that every file you create can be traced back to you.

As it currently stands, if you need to access Excel files under UNIX
you have to write your own code to do so. There is no standard
open-source library to access Excel data. This article will discuss
the Chicago Project, and how it attempts to fix this problem.

mp3s of the entire conference are now available via BitTorrent. Download instructions are here. It's very simple, especially under windows.

Release early, release often. For programmers that's written in stone. However, how many non-programmers try (insert favourite opensource/free OS here), fire up that puppy, & find that the "released early" application they sat down to use is 'buggy'. While it is freshmeat to you & I, to these new end-users, it's what they're running away from. And guess what? There is currently no good solution for this... those bugs are generally uninteresting and newbies don't program yet.

In his book Charles Ferguson tells the story of his start up Vermeer, how they saw the opportunity for FrontPage, and then sold the company to Microsoft. He gives a compelling account of the Web industry in 94, 95, 96 and 97: how Netscape had a historic opportunity to displace the Microsoft monopoly, and how MS themselves had failed to see the huge opportunity the Internet presented and were asleep at the wheel. MS eventually woke up, partly thanks to the braying of Netscape's hopelessly naive management team, and marshalled all their considerable resources to deal with the threat from Netscape. Ferguson predicts Sun will be out of business by 2006. At first I was flabbergasted by this conclusion, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

So you don't write code for NASA? Your code isn't running on a life support system or medical equipment? If there's a bug, QA will find it, and besides, you're behind schedule and you needed to get this out the door last week! Right?

Wrong. Your bugs, design flaws, and security holes could cost your customers billions of dollars. If the business environment ever changed so that software vendors were liable for defective products just like any other vendor, your company could be bankrupted by the lawsuits.

With free access to source code, it is possible for a team of programmers to go through an entire GNU system to add a new feature to all relevant programs.

Also started with GNU-Friends is the Free Software Development Network. More info on how to join it can be found here.

Having gotten a little tired of silly and stupid attacks on Miguel I felt it was time someone put things in perspective. Hope no one takes offence :) So here is the screenplay for a Soap opera I call:

The Hacks of our lives

It is not based on the truth rather it is based on the warped reality as percieved by some of the people posting comments to sites likes Slashdot and LinuxToday.

All other names have been changed to protect the innocent and to make sure you are not able to guess who the other people are.

What are the risks of running an Open Source Project? Every maintainer of an Open Source project will always have issues that she/he needs to mitigate all the time. what are the best way to do it?

Extreme Programming meets Publishing meets Perl. Welcome the new Perl magazine, The Perl Review.

I'm a computer scientist. I'm very fond of free software as it helps me to use my machine to the fullest possible extent. It is also a bless when writing research code, free software will almost always cover the basics for you. A computer scientist can handle most of the issues that would be difficult to accomplish in a proprietary operating system reliably and rapidly.

It is a frequent extrapolation in the free software community to liken research to free software: all research software should be released as free software.

In this article, I argue that research code has very different requirements from free software (ie GNU/Linux systems) and propose that a license suited to the needs of a researcher should be crafted.

I'm a computer scientist. I'm very fond of free software as it helps me to use my machine to the fullest possible extent. It is also a bless when writing research code, free software will almost always cover the basics for you. A computer scientist can handle most of the issues that would be difficult to accomplish in a proprietary operating system reliably and rapidly.

It is a frequent extrapolation in the free software community to liken research to free software: all research software should be released as free software.

In this article, I argue that research code has very different requirements from free software (ie GNU/Linux systems) and propose that a license suited to the needs of a researcher should be crafted.

I think this is too late for the consultation process, but since I am happy with the formulation, I'd like to share my argument for the appeal court overruling the DOJ/Microsoft settlement and pursuing a breakup.

The Free Software Magazine, Issue 01, has just been published by Free Software Foundation, China Academy or FSF-China. It is available in html and pdf and printed copies can also be ordered from the publisher.

The content is also available from a mirror in the USA at www.free- soft.org.

This magazine is supported by the FSF and is dedicated specifically to free software. Its includes technical articles, news and essays about free software projects and of general interests to the community.

The Free Software Magazine, Issue 01, has just been published by Free Software Foundation, China Academy or FSF-China. It is available in html and pdf and printed copies can also be ordered from the publisher.

The content is also available from a mirror in the USA at www.free- soft.org.

This magazine is supported by the FSF and is dedicated specifically to free software. Its includes technical articles, news and essays about free software projects and of general interests to the community.

Crackmonkey help us! Both the badpeople and the badvogato links are not working now so i have no access to the site!