"Is it here to stay?" has to be one of the most common questions enterprise users ask when considering Open Source options for their business needs. It's a legitimate concern with any product, Open Source or not — who wants to deploy a mission-critical service one day and be told it's no longer in development the next? In a time when the corporate side of Open Source is a bit up and down, spreading strategic support around is itself mission critical.

Ubuntu fans will already know that there are three more days until the latest version of Ubuntu drops, and we'll be knee-deep in coverage when it does. Shortly after version 9.10, or Karmic Koala, lands on the metaphorical shelves, the next round of development will hit the ground running.

This year's linux.conf.au — which will, despite the name, be held in Wellington, New Zealand — is fast approaching. For those waiting to get in on the action up front, the time to act is now, because the early bird will soon have flown the coop.

Mixing Open Source communities and corporate boardrooms is a lot like mixing nitroglycerin — done properly, it produces unmeasurable good, but make a wrong move and the results won't be pretty. Some companies, like Red Hat, are adept at successfully marrying the two, while other companies seem to spend more time than they should diving for the nearest bunker.

In the last several years, governments — and particularly those in Europe — have been snapping up Open Source alternatives like little old ladies at Loehmann's. The push towards Open continued this week as the Dutch police ditched Windows for the rosy cap.

Copyright law is "interesting" to say the least — and incredibly contentious. For some, it is an evil that stifles progress. For others, it is all that stands between them and bankruptcy. As with anything, the nature of copyright is not black and white — there are not just shades of gray, but a whole rainbow of copyright colors.

There are a plethora of opportunities for geeks to meet and greet one another throughout the year: linux.conf.au, Linux Congress, OSCON, Linux Plumber's Conference, LinuxCon, the list goes on. There is one, however, where the focus is purely on the customer, so-to-speak — the end user. The conference in question, aptly named the End User Summit, is quickly drawing near, and the Linux Foundation is wondering who wants to be there.

It's always interesting, as well as incredibly frustrating, when a company takes a stand on an issue and then switches back and forth based on what best suits it on any particular day. There's a word for taking a stand against something and then doing it yourself, but we're not going to use that word. More than a few people have been using it to describe a growing feud between two of the biggest names from the old order and the new.

Many things have rings: mobile phones have incredibly annoying ones, jewelers have incredibly expensive ones, and Hell — at least according to Dante — has incredibly detailed ones. For the past three years, thanks to a government contractor called Coverity, Open Source has rung as well.

Just about any Linux geek ought to know that Ubuntu has a naming...fetish. While it's parent Debian sticks to Toy Story, and Fedora opts for the oddest link between old and new, Ubuntu takes a more animal-centric approach, but not without its own share of odd adjectives.

If there's one complaint we in the Linux world hear more than anything, it's "My [whatever] doesn't work with Linux." The unfortunate truth is that, while their infrastructure is likely Linux powered, the majority of device manufacturers aren't thinking about the desktop version when designing their wares. When a manufacturer does think outside the box (the one on the shelf, with the $200 price tag), it's a great day for us all — when they make really cool devices, it's all the better.

Open Source events tend to be rather spread out across the year. linux.conf.au starts things off in January, followed by Linux Journal staff favorite Penguicon in May, two of the major yearly conferences in July, the Linux Symposium and O'Reilly's OSCON, the new but integral Linux Plumber's Conference in September, and wrapping it all up, the Linux Congress in October. Added to that, just days from now, is the inaugural LinuxCon and the Geek High Holy Day, Software Freedom Day.

The announcement arriving today from New Zealand is a lot like a birth announcement. It's been nine months in the making, reveals all the vital statistics, and encourages everyone to come and visit. In that spirit, we are pleased to announce the arrival of the conference schedule for the 2010 linux.conf.au.

Having your Linux distribution suddenly disappear from the internet would put a strain on anyone. It does happen from time to time, however, something the team at Fedora can testify to. Announcing in advance that your distro will pull a David Copperfield would prove far less stressful, and that's exactly what the good people at openSUSE have done.

Every true Linux geek knows that Linus Torvalds is our fearless leader, the developer-in-chief, keeper of the stable tree and decider of what will be. But according to the Linux Foundation, what you see may not be what you get.

Yesterday, we brought you the first of two pieces covering a recent post by Esther Schindler summarizing What Open Source Projects Need to Know About Interacting with the Press, the presentation she co-lead with openSUSE Community Manager Joe Brockmeier, O'Reilly's James Turner, and Page One PR's Jennifer Cloer, who oversees public relations for the Linux Foundation. Today we conclude with Schindler's final point, and our own suggestions.

As we all know, OSCON provides a multitude of opportunities for those in the Open Source world to learn not just the ins and outs of what's new, but how to improve their projects on fronts ranging from code to documentation to community members. One such opportunity at this year's convention came in the form of a panel presentation on press relations, a subject that can be both touchy and treacherous where PR pros are scarce. As that's the business we're in, and our readership includes many in target audience, we thought it would be beneficial to pass on.

The internet is alive with the sound of screaming this week, as everyone and their brother rushes to announce the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on SCO's appeal of the U.S. District Court's decision in its case against Novell. To hear some tell it, SCO has emerged triumphant, Novell is vanquished, darkness shall reign in the whole of the land, and male pattern baldness will engulf us all.

The KDE vs. GNOME debate — which we sincerely hope we aren't sparking anew — is one of the great legacies of the Linux world. Everyone seems to have an opinion, whether it's passionate support for one coupled with vehement odium for the other, a more general sense of "This is what I started with," or a love of an entirely different, less mainstream desktop environment. All of those sentiments have surely been on display within the openSUSE community of late, as the distribution has worked its way towards choosing a default desktop.

If you thought the sale saga of Sun Microsystems ended in April, Thursday's news from Washington may have come as a surprise. Months after the ink dried on the deal between Sun and database heavyweight Oracle, the U.S. Department of Justice has finally gotten around to giving its blessing.