Groklaw is the blog that has made a difference. Created as a personal project by Pamela Jones, better known as PJ, in 2003, its stated purpose was to increase understanding of the law as it is applied to Linux and free software.

Groklaw emerged just as SCO began its legal action against IBM and the Linux community, and quickly became a focus for Linux users, programmers and legal professionals in their mission to expose, understand and demystify the issues surrounding SCO's legal action.

Debian GNU/Linux was the first project to be deliberately modelled on the principles of distributed software development, and provides the core software for many of the more successful commercial Linux distributions. Though Debian does not have the high profile of other Linux distributions the commercial success of Linux may owe more to the Debian community than advocates of Linux in the enterprise are ever likely to acknowledge.

"Unlike the wider network where there is genuine competition, the desktop has not been subject to open standards, and this has had a deleterious effect on competition and innovation. This is the most important outcome of the European Court's recent decision to uphold the European Commission's judgment against Microsoft. While the mainstream press focused on the record fine imposed on Microsoft, the more engaging and decisive part of the judgment was the Commission's insistence that Microsoft publish its proprietary protocols to enable interoperability."

There are Linux users that have little use for productivity suites, and depend instead on a simple text editor, which has all the functions any one man or woman could need, and makes files that everyone can read. This method of communicating with the outside world is all too obvious for those of us who have learned their craft with a keyboard and a command line, and have never depended on the click of a mouse for access to a computer. Once upon a time Linux users prided themselves on lack of bloat and simplicity of use. But times have changed.

Microsoft has submitted two of its "shared source" licences for approval by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). The significance of this can be read in different ways. Some see it as a victory for open source, a capitulation on the part of Microsoft, and an admission that open source will be the way of the future. Others see it as a divisive move, designed to emphasise existing splits within the free and open source community. In reality, it is probably a bit of both.

"Due to the fact that Linux is free software and belongs to no-one, it is often assumed that Linux is "surrounded by legal uncertainties."

In The Gutenberg Galaxy, published in 1962, three decades before the inception of the World Wide Web, Marshall McLuhan wrote that "the new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village."

Before "open source", before free software, there was software in the public domain. You could say that software in the public domain was truly free. The code was "open source" and the user had the right to take it, break it, appropriate it, re-use it, package it, sell it, re-brand and license it, or do what you will with it.