Today the Southern California Linux Exposition's fifth iteration kicked off with all-day mini-conferences on free and open source software in the health care industry and women in the free/open source software community. Since the sessions on women seemed to be the less popular, least business-friendly, and most interesting of the two subjects, that was the series I decided to sit in on. It was a life-changing experience for all who attended.

The competition among Ajax programming books has gotten all the more fierce with Prentice Hall's excellent Understanding Ajax. While many Ajax texts are good at covering a handful of advanced Ajax-related topics, this one starts at the beginning and covers every necessary aspect of Ajax programming in just the right amount of detail.

Today the company that develops and controls the db4objects object database announced that in addition to the GNU General Public License and a commercial use license, it will also be offering its flagship product under a new, more freely distributable agreement: the db4objects Opensource Compatibility License (dOCL). This allows the software to be redistributed with a wider range of non-commercial open source projects, many of which cannot easily redistribute programs licensed under the GPL. An explanation of this software, the license, and a brief interview with db4objects CEO Christof Wittig are below.

Much hype accompanied Google's takeover of the Urchin Web analytics package and its subsequent free offering of a low-end version of Urchin to anyone who wanted to sign up. There's a lot to dislike about Google Analytics, but its quality and availability have improved somewhat since its initial release, and for those who can't afford a high-end analytics package that can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month, there are few reasonable alternatives. Wiley Publishing's Google Analytics is a good, in-depth guide to this service and all of its various settings.

Midnight on January 16 marked the official release of The Burning Crusade, the first official major add-on for the blockbuster massively multiplayer online roleplaying game World of Warcraft. Computer stores across the country re-opened at the stroke of midnight to sell the expansion pack to Warcraft die-hards. The really big events hosted by the game's manufacturer, Blizzard Entertainment, are all in California, complete with signings by some of the game's developers. Here in Orlando, FL the launch didn't arrive with quite as much heraldry, but crowds gathered and lines formed at every GameStop and EBGames store in the area. Read on for the full report.

I've spent the last several weeks writing, revising, and editing a project called The OpenBSD 4.0 Crash Course for O'Reilly Media. It is designed to quickly teach you the basics of how to install, configure, use, and upgrade the OpenBSD operating system as a desktop or server. It's specific to version 4.0, and I plan on writing a new version for each future OpenBSD release. If you've wanted to learn OpenBSD or are anxious to get into the BSDs in general, this is your best starting point. I decided to pitch it as an electronic guide because it doesn't need to be particularly long, it's possible to copy-and-paste commands from it to your terminal window, and you can print out a hard copy if you want. It's now available for download for U.S. $9.99 from O'Reilly, and I plan on donating a portion of my royalties to the OpenBSD Project so that it can continue to produce great software. Each section is designed to be like my how-to articles -- concise and easy to understand. There are no preambles or politics; just good information. Below is a sample from the book to show you what you can expect from it.

Recently an issue over the vBulletin license arose over an animation site that an agent of Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. (the company that owns the vBulletin forum software) reportedly found distasteful. According to the email text, a man named Howard G. Spinks of Pirate Reports, a company that investigates unlicensed software use for Jelsoft, told the animation site's administrator, "having seen the content of your forum and some of the depraved comments that obviously it is time for you to moderate the forum to avoid a likely revocation of license." At that, the site's actual content became a background issue -- the real question in the minds of many forum administrators was, "Can Jelsoft demand editorial control or censorship of my site just because I use its software?"