On June 29, 2007 the Free Software Foundation released the GNU General Public License, version 3. What happened since then? Federico Biancuzzi had the opportunity to discuss many subjects with the FSF's founder and president Richard Stallman.

The Conficker worm, which spreads by infecting Windows computers who are not properly kept up-to-date, was supposed to make a big splash on April 1, but that day passed with a deafening silence on the Conficker front. Since then, there has been some movement by the worm, and data gathered from enterprise users of Sophos' Endpoint Assessment Test indicates that 10% of Windows machines have still not been properly patched, leaving them wide open to a Conficker infection.

At the Linux Collaboration Summit, held last week in San Francisco, an interesting panel discussion took place about Linux' position in the wider operating systems market. Included were Jim Zemlin, Linux Foundation executive director, Ian Murdock, Sun community and developer vice president, and Sam Ramji, Microsoft platform strategy director. Titled "Why Can't We All Just Get Along?", the discussion focussed on Microsoft's somewhat dubious relationship with the open source community.

Microsoft will soon start encouraging users running old versions of Internet Explorer to upgrade to the latest edition of its browser. People running IE 6 and 7 on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 will in the third week of April receive a notification through the Automate Update service that encourages them to upgrade their system to IE 8, Microsoft has said. This is not a hard sell, though. IE 8, released last month, won't start automatically installing itself on your machine - you'll have to opt in, by clicking the install button itself on the update message's accompanying screen.

Learn how to use configurable JavaServer Pages TagLib-based controls that leverage JavaScript Serialized Object Notation, JavaScript scripting language, and Cascading Style Sheets. Because they are standard JSP TagLib controls, find out how you can easily drop them into any Java EE application to provide more intuitive and responsive user user interfaces.

LinuxFund and the Open Graphics Project are teaming up to raise funds and supply 10 Open Graphics Development boards to open source developers. After several years in development the Open Graphics project is offering pre-orders of development boards. The Open Graphics Project aims to design an open source hardware/open architecture and standard for graphics cards, primarily targeting free software/open source operating systems. LinuxFund is accepting donations on their website to help fund the project. Additionally you can pre-order an OGD1 board for yourself through Traversal Technology.

The weeks just keep flying by, don't they? It's time for another Week in Review, and this time, we actually have a few interesting things to review. Microsoft is going on the full assault against Apple and Linux on netbooks, Canonical retaliates, the IBM-Sun deal is still the talk of the week, and we did a podcast. This week's My Take isn't a happy one, but it is an important one.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at Computer World asks himself when he first started using Linux after attending the Linux Foundation Summit where several others were asked the same question. The Linux Foundation has posted a video of some of the answers; boy, do I feel young.

"Moore's Law is maxing out. This is an oft-made prediction in the computer industry. The latest to chime in is an IBM fellow, according to a report. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors on a microprocessor would double approximately every two years - a prediction that has proved to be remarkably resilient. But IBM Fellow Carl Anderson, who researches server computer design at IBM, claims the end of the era of Moore's Law is nigh, according to a report in EE Times. Exponential growth in every industry eventually has to come to an end, according Anderson, who cited railroads and speed increases in the aircraft industry, the report said.

PC-BSD, the desktop-oriented FreeBSD variant, has released version 7.1, dubbed Galileo. In case you don't know, PC-BSD is a FreeBSD distribution with lots of customisations focussed on the desktop user. Its most defining features is the Push Button Installer, a self-contained package format with handy installers/uninstallers. PC-BSD 7.1 comes loaded with changes and updates.

The advertisement wars are really heating up, with Microsoft going on the full assault against Apple with several TV advertisements, after Apple had been pounding the Redmond company with its "I'm a PC" campaign. Just as Microsoft published the third Laptop Hunters commercial, the Linux Foundation announced the winner of the "We're Linux" contest.

After the more-or-less positively received "You find it, you keep it" television advertisements, it seems as if Microsoft is quickly falling back to its previous mistakes of relying on easily countered FUD-like tactics. We already discussed the blog post regarding Linux on netbooks, which was easily countered on virtually every point made. However, it gets even worse: Microsoft has ordered a study detailing what the company calls the hidden "Apple tax" that you are supposedly paying if you go Apple. Now, I'm the first to state that Apple simply doesn't provide the optimal pricing for everyone, but this Microsoft sponsored study is so completely and utterly ridiculous it makes me wonder just who on earth would look at it and go "Yeah, this looks pretty convincing!"

We've all seen the early demos of something called "BumpTop", a sort of 3D desktop where files are presented as 3D objects with physical properties. Recently, the project moved from concept to product with the release of BumpTop 1.0. The big question now is: are we dealing with the next big thing in desktop computing, or just a gimmick?

Microsoft on Wednesday was hit with a USD 388m verdict in a long-running patent-infringement case. In the suit, Uniloc alleged that Microsoft used its patented technology as part of the software giant's product-activation methods. A federal jury in Rhode Island found that Windows XP, Office XP and Windows Server 2003 infringed on a Uniloc patent.