The state of Free Software is good and getting better every day. I like to describe status in numbers but others are more qualitative. Take Eben Moglen, for instance. He gave an inspiring presentation on this topic at LibrePlanet 2010. You can download the video here (60 MB, ogv, 48 min.). Some key points I found surprising although I knew the facts. I had not connected the dots:

• Free Software has come from being ignored and ridiculed to being required by everyone. The world of IT now depends on Free Software.
• Free Software quickly solved the problem of “write once – run everywhere” when no one else could.
• Free Software is being defended against software-patents by large businesses that have tons of software-patents. Patent-trolls hurt all software businesses.
• Free Software is the best software because it has no commercial interests yet businesses love it because it is so good and costs so little.
• Free Software database, MySQL, was a key component of the purchase of SUN so that Oracle could defeat the scalability of M$’s SQLserver.
• Free Software will be even stronger in the future because the low cost of entry and the four freedoms (run, examine, modify and distribute) mean almost every youngster interested in IT will know about it and take that knowledge into adulthood.

According to Gartner, virtualization is in the early stage of mainstream acceptance. Thin client desktops have been around a while but still are used by a small fraction of clients. The movement to various kinds of virtualization will carry thin clients along. Thin clients can be part of the hosted virtual desktop service but the cheapest way to go is with thin clients connected to a UNIX OS such as GNU/Linux. X has been around a long time, is mature, and is being actively developed. There are other protocols which can be used with that other OS as well but X is pretty good for what I do.

If you read TFA you see repeatedly that the acceptance of such and such virtualization was delayed by M$’s baroque licensing. Even now they try to squeeze every cent out of every client. Life is so much simpler with GNU/Linux. Connect it and forget about it. It’s that easy. With Debian GNU/Linux, I can make any PC a thin client of a newer more powerful machine by doing a minimial installation on the client (just X, not a whole GUI) and put “X -query newpcip” in /etc/rc.local and reboot. On the newpc, I can use GNOME, the default desktop, and run gdmsetup as root and enable tcp connections, remote login and perhaps add “Welcome to NewPC!” to the login screen and reboot or restart gdm. It’s that easy. No purchase orders. No choosing a vendor. No fiddling around. I do have to create accounts if I am adding users…

Profit is the number one motive for malware these days with espionage close behind. Intel is in the process of buying McAfee for $7.68 billion. You can image what the whole anti-malware industry is worth if McAfee alone is worth that much. Intel is looking at tie-ins to hardware for this industry. Can you spell DRM? Expect locked-down motherboards and filters on top of Ethernet and USB ports and storage devices.

While security is a great thing, the anti-malware industry would be worth a lot less if it were not for the ubiquity of that other OS and its on-going welcome to malware. Users of that other OS are tired of their machines constantly being invaded by malware and slowing down as they become less secure. By building security into the hardware, I expect Intel intends to shield the end-user from most of this and thus supporting the monopoly. Imagine the marketing hype for that other OS not needing anti-malware stuff “only on Intel”. Expect more profit and higher prices…

AMD has cut prices again. You have to pay as little as $100 (in thousand quantities) to get an X4 CPU. As most of us can idle a 32bit single-core CPU in our browsing, The dual and triple-core Athlon IIs will do for as little as $76.

I used to teach students that a PC was made of a bunch of components all available for $100 or less. I may have to cut that back to $76 or less. We live in great times for IT as end-users. At these prices, consumers can build a PC for the same price as retail and avoid the tax of that other OS, a great deal, paying for the labour of installation and assembly. It pays to install GNU/Linux.

Digitimes researchers find that Android has really made a move in the second quarter of 2010. The Inquirer writes:
“We have hand it to Digitimes for showing such diplomacy. A more frank version would be that the Vole is sinking without a trace, Windows Phone 7 will be late and nobody wants its current crop of phones, but then again not everyone displays our lack of tact and sensitivity.”

GNU/Linux does well when the OEMs do not conspire to block choice, eh?