"It was a hard road to get to the release of PGP. To add to the stress, a week before PGP's first release, I discovered the existence of another email encryption standard called Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM), which was backed by several big companies, as well as RSA Data Security. I fully expected PEM to crush PGP, and even briefly considered not releasing it.

If you're ever confused by, or mixed up the terms, "open source" and "free sofware," this is for you. It's a primer on the topic of what they are, how they are alike, and how they are different. So if you've heard of the GPL, but are not exactly sure what it is or what it does, this is for you. Armed with what you learn here, you will be much less vulnerable to the veritable barrage of FUD that the Redmondian Empire is hurling at the whole open source/free software world.

This article is a broad overview of the state of game boxes such as the XBox, Nintendo GameCube, and the Sony Playstation2. It also includes some insight on plans for the Linux-based Nokia MediaTerminal, which it calls a resurgence of the convergence pitch.

Eazel is shutting down. Some people are probably wondering what's up with

packages maintained by former Eazel employees. Darin Adler gives the status for a few

of them and reports that with the exception of some of the libraries built around

facilitating Eazel's services, several former Eazel employees will continue to work on the

software, with an eye to integrating the packages with GNOME 2.0.

Patents have been a lightning rod issue in the Open Source/Free Software communities for some time now. This feature looks at the legacy of Jerome Lemelson, who played the patent game to the tune of $1.5 billion and counting in what this article calls "an intellectual land grab." Read about the man who earned almost as many patents as Thomas Edison.

If you're still feeling uncertain about what it will cost to make a Linux play, here's some help. There are a logical series of steps you can take to evaluate the real costs involved in adopting Linux in your enterprise. In this article, Anne Zieger outlines these factors.

Engineers around the world, connected via the Internet, are seeking to develop a vast library of freely available hardware designs, similar to how Linux developers and other open-source programmers share intellectual property. This library--consisting of design elements for processors, memory controllers, peripherals, motherboards, etc--would aide semiconductor start-ups and device manufacturers alike.

Although Linux has made tremendous inroads into the corporate-computing world, barriers to its widespread adoption still exist. They include ease of upgrades, vendor support, a general lack of software that can run on the platform (especially enterprise and e-com applications), lack of a strong robust file system, proper backup support, etc.

"Most flavours of Linux come with the GNU debugger, or gdb to the shell. Gdb lets you see the internal structure of a program, print out variable values, set breakpoints and single step through source code. It is an extremely powerful tool for fixing problems in program code. In this article I'll try to show how useful gdb is."

Open Source has become the rallying cry for the software industry... an industry which only twenty years ago was as deeply mired into the old economy way of thinking as most other industries are today. The question is, can we take our 'lessons learned' and help other industries take the next step to a truly "new economy"? This article discusses the issue and offers at least one possible way of moving forward (specifically for the auto and energy industries, but probably applicable to other industries, as well).