An interesting debate has started between important people in the open source circles. Stallman and Kuhn in their essay 'Freedom or Power?' state that: "However, one so-called freedom that we do not advocate is the "freedom to choose any license you want for software you write We reject this because it is really a form of power, not a freedom." Eric S. Raymond fights back: "In other words, Stallman and Kuhn want to be able to make decisions that affect other developers more than themselves. By the definition they themselves have proposed, they want power". Tim O'Reilly started the debate: "If Freedom Zero for developers is the freedom to offer software on whatever terms the developer sets and a user will accept; Freedom Zero for users is the right to choose whatever software they like, without interference from platform vendors who try to deny that choice."

Brandon Sharitt contacted us and introduced us the operating system he is working on: "I've recently joined yet another opensource operating system that is supposed to unify all other operating sytems while 'destroying' Microsoft. The only difference with this one is that it may actually work. The project is called BoxOS."

The VMS (Virtual Memory System) operating system is available only on VAX and Alpha processors, and in spite of its undeniable qualities, its future seems uncertain. The FreeVMS project tends to the coding of an operating system under the GPL licence according to the specifications of the VMS systems. This operating system will function at least on i386 architecture, PPC, Sparc and Alpha processors. It is developed using the C language and it consists of a POSIX kernel and a DCL command line interpreter. In other news, MenuetOS 0.61 was released just a couple of days ago.

"The desktop metaphor was a brilliant innovation--30 years ago. Now it's an unmanageable mess, and the search is on for a better way to handle information. If you have ever forgotten what you named a file or which folder you put it in, you probably will agree that it's time for a change. The desktop metaphor is decades old, arising from early-1970s work at Xerox's fabled Palo Alto Research Center, and was never intended to address today's computing needs. TechReview searches for our next computer Interface.

Apple Computer has a message for Windows users considering an upgrade to XP: "Come back to the Mac." In the wake of a $1 billion Windows XP marketing campaign, all eyes would appear to be turned away from Mac OS X 10.1.1, the new operating system Apple significantly upgraded in September. But Apple is convinced that Windows XP's endorsement of technologies that first appeared on Macs--802.11b wireless networking, CD burning, DVD playback, movie making, and easy retrieval of digital camera images, among others--will help Apple system and software sales.

The first Windows beta for gobeProductive 3 Office Suite is now released. The download weighs only 5 MB, and it expires on January 15th. gobeProductive 3 includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, vector and raster graphics editors and a presentation tool. A special upgrade price ($40) will be offered to BeOS users, while the full price will be around $125 USD under the Family License (you can freely install the suite to all your home PCs, plus one PC at your workplace). The Linux version is scheduled for the second quarter of 2002. If you encounter bugs in this beta version, let Gobe know about them, by emailing them and make sure you mention the version of Windows, printer driver and your hardware specs (CPU, graphics card etc). OSNews featured a world's first preview of the office suite just two weeks ago.