A badly researched Yahoo News piece recently characterized open source developers' reluctance to adopt the new GNU General Public License version 3 as creating "a rift in the open source community between idealists who believe all software should be free of charge and free to use, and pragmatists who want to see open source software make further inroads into commercial use." There are so many things wrong in that statement that I hardly know where to begin. Is it really so difficult to understand this stuff? Yes, there is a rift in the community -- if there is a single, cohesive, unanimous community at all -- but it's not for the reasons listed in this Yahoo story.

Ed. note: In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, today's editorial was contributed by a character that both the proprietary software industry and the free software movement fear and loathe: A software pirate. According to the high-handed moral arbiters of the world, a person of such questionable character and loose (as in the opposite of tight, despite what you may have seen elsewhere on the Web) morals is a danger to our very thoughts and consciences. So if you are someone who is easily offended, or if your beliefs are so flimsy that you are afraid they will be shaken by some pirate talk, you may want to skip this one. On the other hand, if you're one of those people who secretly loves to be infuriated, and you're a proud member of the Church of Stallman or a Microsoft shareholder, read on. This editorial is dedicated to every person who has ever copied software and given it out to friends; doubly so if you also gave them the activation crack.

Wall Street Journal Columnist Walt Mossberg says that Ubuntu isn't for mainstream computer users. He may be right, but I would like to know what his basis for comparison is. Though I can see based on his photo that Walt is decades older than I am and has had more access to more operating systems over the course of his career, I have to question his experience in installing, configuring, and using desktop operating systems. The issues he lists are genuine, but not unsolvable, and aren't materially different than the same initial configuration trouble that any user could have with any operating system on any modern computer.

According to the Q2 2007 Jon Peddie Workstation Report, AMD is still struggling with a minority market share, Dell is still on top, and Hewlett-Packard is still the number two workstation manufacturer. Buried in the details, though, is something more interesting: Dell is also the number one Linux workstation manufacturer.

After I posted yesterday's call for stories from or about people who claim to have had comment posts deleted from Groklaw, I received an email from Pamela Jones asking me why I was "doing this." Since such a question presumes a certain level of conspiracy, I replied that the call for stories is self-explanatory -- if what people have said is true, this is a significantly interesting story for my readers, many of whom (perhaps wrongly) consider Groklaw an impartial source. The next email I got on the subject was from Ziff Davis Enterprise editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, accusing me of attacking Jones in a public forum (The Jem Report) via my call for stories, and advising me that this is not tolerable on his Internet Press Guild mailing list, of which I have been an active member for a few months. He then kicked me off the IPG list. It seems you aren't allowed to write about Steven J Vaughan-Nichols' friends, or question the operational practices of Web sites friendly to free software ideals, and remain an IPG member. This is a sad day for me, not because I am now an outcast -- on the contrary, that's the best part! -- but because a writer I'd held a great deal of professional respect for sacked me because -- I know this is bizarre -- I was being too much of a journalist. I am sad because I thought SJVN was a pillar of professional journalism, the sort of guy who would encourage a hard charger like me to chase important stories like this one. That Vaughan-Nichols would kick me from an unofficial online journalism group to pressure me into killing a story and to show support for his friend Pamela Jones is, to me, shocking and heartbreaking. Unfortunately, among journalists who are also members of the free software social/political movement, there are questions you are not allowed to ask, people you are not allowed to write about, and personal politics and cronyism trump professional obligation. So let's clear a few things up and air some dirty laundry, shall we?

From Kyle Bennett over at HardOCP, I've learned today that I'm not the only one who has problems with some tech PR firms. This time it's a PR guy who made ridiculous claims about a computer's performance, then refused to back them up with facts or figures. Before you continue reading, I should mention that most PR people are professional, pleasant to deal with, and admit their limitations when it comes to technical subjects. Updated

For quite a while I have heard, read, and been personally told stories about messages that have been deleted from Groklaw's comment section. Specifically these are posts that do not agree with Pamela Jones' opinions and conclusions, or seek to debate or clarify issues that are not clear-cut or obvious. I'm curious about the voices that have been silenced by Groklaw's censor, and might like to write a story about it if I can collect enough information about the people and posts that PJ would like us not to read. So if you have posted a message on Groklaw and subsequently found that it was removed or edited, or if your Groklaw user account has been terminated without your consent, tell me about it -- email me at jem at thejemreport.com.