"The Free Software Foundation wishes to clarify a few factual points about the Second Discussion Draft of GNU GPL version 3, on which recent discussion has presented inaccurate information. The FSF has no power to force anyone to switch from GPLv2 to GPLv3 on their own code. We intentionally wrote GPLv2 (and GPLv1) so we would not have this power. Software developers will continue to have the right to use GPLv2 for their code after GPLv3 is published, and we will respect their decisions."

"On the strength of its broad platform support, approachable configuration tools, estimable set of vendor certifications and solid support options, Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has earned a reputation as a safe choice for Linux at enterprise sites. SLES 10, which Novell began shipping this summer, continues in this vein. It also adds to the mix Xen virtualization capabilities, which, while clearly still on the road to maturity, fit in well with the distribution and add a new deployment and management arrow to the SLES administrator's quiver."

"With the recent public release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 beta 1, system administrators like myself (and their IT managers) may face major system upgrades in the near future. Given that I've got until 2012 before maintenance support for RHEL 4 ends, I need to see real value to convince me to upgrade, especially when you consider RHEL 4 has proved to meet the needs of my organization nicely. So, the question is why should enterprises upgrade from earlier releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux when RHEL 5 is officially released?"

"Sure, you've use Firefox and Internet Explorer. You may have even dabbled in Flock and Opera, or even become a devotee of one of these lesser-known applications. But have you ever browsed the web with Deepnet Explorer? How 'bout SeaMonkey? And when's the last time you used Netscape? Did you even know that it was still around? And that's without even mentioning the really obscure browsers, with names like NutScrape, Orca, Salamander, Skipstone, SkyKruzer, Kazehakase, Madfox, Arachne, Charon, Chimera, Dillo, Oregano, and Viola. Here we'll review three web browsers that are far from today's Internet limelight: Deepnet Explorer, Netscape, and SeaMonkey." On a related note, a new version of K-Meleon has been released.

Hackers are hitting paydirt in their search for browser bugs. According to Symantec's twice-yearly Internet Security Threat Report, hackers found 47 bugs in Mozilla's open-source browsers and 38 bugs in Internet Explorer during the first six months of this year. That's up significantly from the 17 Mozilla and 25 IE bugs found in the previous six months. Even Apple's Safari browser saw its bugs double, jumping from six in the last half of 2005 to 12 in the first half of 2006. Opera was the only browser tracked by Symantec that saw the number of vulnerabilities decline, but not by much. Opera bugs dropped from nine to seven during the period.

According to a Gartner report in June this year, the overall thin-client computing market will continue to grow at a steady pace during the next several years. The analyst noted that this growth will be fueled by falling thin-client terminal prices. While the thin-client approach makes Linux PCs easier to manage, there are still kinks to iron out with desktop Linux operating system, according to Gartner.

A small registry hack in Vista RC1 will turn on the Windows Mobile Device Center, Microsoft's replacement for ActiveSync. Microsoft enables the WMDC only for internal testers, but this little hack enables WMDC for everyone. Much-needed for PDA owners.

"This article introduces text presentation in the Eclipse C/C++ Development Tooling. Text presentation is an important advantage of the CDT. The clear, multicolored display makes it easy to read and navigate through code. Understanding how this works is crucial, whether you want to understand the CDT code or build a full-featured source editor of your own. Further, the mechanisms that make CDT text presentation possible are also needed for a more important capability: automatic parsing."

In the latest study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, over 700 technology experts were asked to evaluate an assortment of scenarios in an attempt to determine potential trends for the year 2020. With responses from representatives of the World Wide Web Consortium, ICANN, the Association of Internet Researchers, and major corporations like Google and IBM, the report reflects the perceptions of "Internet pioneers," more than half of whom "were online before 1993."

Windows XP is turning five years old, but will anybody want to celebrate the occasion? Microsoft's long-anticipated replacement for 'Win 9x' - the series of releases that began with Windows 95 and ended with Windows Millennium Edition - was never supposed to stick around this long. But half a decade after it began shipping on new computers (followed a month later by its retail debut), XP lingers.

Andrew Morton posted his patch queue with numerous comments about merge plans into the mainline kernel. Among his comments he noted that he would not yet be merging the Reiser4fs, "reiser4. I was planning on merging this, but the batch_write/writev problemight wreck things, and I don't think the patches arising from my recent partial review have come through yet. So it's looking more like 2.6.20."

Used judiciously, asynchronous I/O (AIO) can provide a significant speed benefit, says David Chisnall. Perhaps enough to help your program overcome the fact that modern processors can really zoom, while hard drives still drag.

"Gael Duval, the founder of the popular MandrivaLinux project, was fired from Mandriva last spring in an effort to cut costs. Almost immediately afterward, Duval began work on a new GNU/Linux distribution, Ulteo. As of this writing, Ulteo has not yet released its first beta edition, but it should be available soon. While we're all waiting, I figured I'd ask Mr Duval some questions about Ulteo, Mandriva, and starting GNU/Linux projects in general."

Alexander Larrson (Red Hat), developer and maintainer of gnome-vfs and Nautilus has proposed a plan to replace gnome-vfs. "Having spent the last 4 years as the gnome-vfs maintainer, and even longer as the primary gnome-vfs user (in Nautilus) I'm well aware of the problems it has. I think that we've reached a point where the problems in the gnome-vfs architecture and its position in the stack are now ranking as one of the most problematic aspects of the gnome platform, especially considering the enhancements and quality improvements seen in other parts of the platform. So, I think the time has come for a serious look at what gnome-vfs could be."