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Today's editorial comes from Skud, a member of freshmeat's Australian staff. She describes it as: "Some deeper thoughts about geek chicks. I wrote this because, on re-reading my earlier article, I realized how insanely sleep-deprived and incoherent I was when I wrote it. And because it was loooong after I should have gone home and I got talking about this with one of the tech support guys over a diet coke..."

Ray Woodcock writes: "In terms relevant to Linux, this freshmeat editorial glances at the tendency of mainstream viewpoints to dismiss other viewpoints as 'fringe,' the propensity of dissident movements to splinter into factions before they can effectively counter their primary adversaries, and the difficulty of creating stability without squelching curiosity."

The PC with a fast Internet connection and a static IP is becoming a common sight in homes, but techno-ignorant customers don't understand the risks involved in owning one. I believe that by combining this with the fact that most people don't want to be responsible for maintaining their systems, a whole new workplace could be created for people with UNIX knowledge. Today, I'll explain why I think we should unblur the distinction between users and admins, and suggest a new way to make money with Free Software.

Soothsayers of Linux doom raise the specter of fragmentation and predict that Linux will suffer the same fate that's held back the commercial UNIX flavors. arnim rupp suggests that not only will Linux hold together, but may also be the means to reunite the UNIX factions.

Jon Lasser began the Bastille Linux Project in order to harden the security of Red Hat Linux, the distribution he uses at work. In the process, he began looking at the other distributions to see how they handle security updates, and he was not at all happy with what he found. In today's editorial, he shares his concerns and explains why it matters to you even if you do all your security monitoring for yourself.

Over the years, desktop computer users have thrown up a number of straw men to explain why they can't use Free operating systems. The community has shot them down one by one, from "It doesn't support my hardware" to "There's no business software available", but there's still one complaint that too often goes unanswered: "I can't make heads or tails of this manual!" In today's editorial, Hairy Larry discusses the need for documentation and the three types of documents he thinks are essential to any program.

In a view-from-the-trenches editorial, Josh Fryman discusses coding standards, why they may be a necessary evil, and how they can sometimes overstep their bounds and inflict pain on the programmers who have to live with them.

We at freshmeat regularly receive submissions of Windows software for inclusion in the appindex. Sometimes it's something that obviously doesn't belong here, like a commercially-licensed closed-sourced word processor. Other times, it's not as clear whether we should include it or not, as when we get a Windows port of a GNU utility or a piece of software that helps dual-booters access the data stored on their ext2 partitions when they're booted into Windows. In today's editorial, Steve Killen discusses the possibilities of free software in an unfree world. We look forward to hearing your own ideas on the subject and on whether such software belongs on freshmeat.

The tradition of freshmeat editorials has been sadly neglected this year. We're going to remedy this by posting an editorial every week from now on, and we invite you to write on any software-related topic about which you have opinions to share. This week, I'll kick things off by offering one myself about how to write a great freshmeat submission and how to write great documentation generally. At the bottom of it, you'll find instructions telling you how you can be our next writer and earn a freshmeat t-shirt and 15 minutes of fame.

osOpinion has a rather thought provoking column about Solaris and Linux: "If you look at what the Linux community is doing now, it has already been done by Sun. Solaris can do everything Linux can do, but better. After reading the following text, ask yourself one simple question: What if Solaris was free?"

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A proposal for standardizing X11 OpenGL/Mesa ABI and SDK issues on Linux has been drafted by Jon Leech, an employee of SGI. Click the details link to read more.

Ed Sawicki (a professional instructor/lecturer who has used NetWare and NT since their beginnings and Unix since 1982) comments on the state of Open Source software in the corporate world of NT and NetWare. He's also used Coherent, QNX, Linux and *BSD. An assembler is his favorite programming tool. He's an open source advocate and a frequent critic of the existing computer establishment. He is the president of the Accelerated Learning Center. For his editorial, hit the details link.

Bruce Perens reviews the recent change of hands of StarOffice to SUN, and how this will affect the licencing, the Linux community, and the general perceptions of users inside and outside of the Open Source community. Hit the details link for the full article.

Red Hat's IPO put them in a position to make waves in the Linux Community, and after discussing it in various forums and thinking long and hard about thier position, I have made some observations. I only hope to see them succeed for the sake of the open source community in general, but there are hard buisness facts to contend with as well.

Conrad Sanderson, a PhD student in Australia, and an advent critic of Microsoft, sent in an interesting piece about Microsoft's upcoming frontal assault on Apache with the release of Windows 2000, and its effect on Linux. To read the text, hit the details link.

Matt Michie, a struggling computer science student in New Mexico who has been a linux advocate for more than three years, sent in an editorial piece dealing with the upcoming battle between software giant Microsoft and the Free Software community. It is entitled Microsoft and the Art of War v1.00. To read the editorial, hit the details link.

Bruce Perens took the time to explain and clarify his position on the APSL debate, and comment on Eric Raymond's recent public plea to "Understand My Job, Please!" Hit the details link to read his statement.

Jakob 'sparky' Kaivo is a Linux advocate, and recently became the webmaster for the LSB Project. He works at/with NoDomainName Networks, and AtDot E-mail Services, and has written the mailing list client Minordomo under the GNU licence.

He has written an interesting piece on why Linux users should give something back to the Linux community, and presented some ideas on how just about anyone can contribute. Hit the details link.

Open Source Software has proven itself to be inordinately successful in providing high quality software in a method that, on its face, defies standard business reasoning. This article clarifies OSS in the language of economics such that the true reasons behind its success may be understood by everyone, not just the coders. I've written an extensive piece explaining just how OSS, in an economic sense, is such an effective system for software development, purchasing, and modification. I'm seeking feedback on this piece, but it's now "open to the public" so send an email to effugas@best.com if you have any comments regarding it. Hit the details link for a list of the editorials' highlights.

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After a pretty long period of time without posting any editorials, the freshmeat team is proud to announce a fresh writeup by Ronald Kuetemeier dealing with the future of Open Source Software and the possibility to take over the market of shrink-wrapped software. Hit the details link for his editorial.

Justin Ryan writes:

"Scott Stone, head developer of Pacific HiTech's TurboLinux Distribution (English), recently wrote an article describing the features and advantages of the Gimp ToolKit (GTK+), an object library for simplifying the development of X Applications that has been widely adopted, including the Mozilla(Netscape) project."

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Steve Adler wrote down some interesting (lenghty) thoughts which seem to be pretty unrelated to the Open Source Software community at the first glance, since he analyzes human evolution and the growth of knowledge in wide circles. If you read on, you'll get his idea what the Information Ecosystem, also known as the Internet, means for OSS community and what might be necessary to preserve its growth and existance by all means.

Ajay Shah sent in a very detailed editorial dealing with the Open Source development effort and proposed strategies to reach the low-priced end user market. He states important facts to keep in mind when thinking about replacing a commercial product with an Open Source one and analyzes what's might be going to happen to the desktop market over the next decade.

Jim Gettys, one of the original authors of the X Window System, sent in a very in depth editorial dealing with the X Window System and its proposed future. This writeup is hard to sum up since it contains way too many informations, facts and hints to mention everything appropriately. Just sit back a few minutes and read it. Please note that this editorial is copyrighted by the author and freshmeat got the explicit permission to distribute it online.

Since the LSB community is rarther calm these days, we hereby throw in an editorial dealing with a different topic. Ian Nandhra wrote an essay about Java on Linux. He reviews the past and current situation and states proposals about how further development should proceed.

Evan Leibovitch, principal of Sound Software and member of the original LSB committee, takes another step back and compares the efforts the Unix world went through with the ongoing Linux Standard efforts. He proposes to open up the LSB process to the community as a whole, instead of having a tight little group run the show. His editorial also carries a ficton that could become true if a major ISV decides to develop a Linux distribution on its own.

Stuart R. Anderson, Senior Engineer at Metro Link Inc. and head of the lsb-spec sub-group submitted a very informative editorial dealing with the way the LSB is going to solve the somewhat biggest problem of Linux: Compatibility. Referring to Jordan Hubbard's editorial, he explains in detail how the LSB compatibility standard is going to be implemented.

Ian Nandhra, President/CEO of NC Laboratories Inc., sent in an editorial addressing the recently arised flamewars all over the net regarding the pretty weird situation of the LSB and other "Linux Standards" such as LSA, LCS, etc. He also discusses some of the basic Linux and Free Software concepts and he tries to show the difficulties a software vendor experiences that intends to develop/support a piece software for the Linux Operating System.

Jim Pick originally intended to delve into some technical details about the differences between Debian and Red Hat and what obstacles lay in store for the LSB team. Due to the obscure activity that took place on the LSB mailing list (including Bruce Perens leaving the project), he changed his editorial to reflect the pros/cons of diversity in the Linux distribution space and what benefits there would be to have a LSB/LCS-style project.

Eric S. Raymond sent in a short writeup to describe the terminology of the Open Source(R) Initiative and the usage of the Open Source(R) Certification Mark. This is also to prevent the mis-use of the term Open Source(R) in the media just as the term "hacker" has been in the past.