On February 24 and 25, around 4,000 geeks gathered in Brussels, Belgium, for the Free and Open source Software Developers European Meeting (FOSDEM).

The 23rd annual Chaos Computer Club Congress offered a fresh perspective on topics such as RFID technology and cyber-crime laws.

Some 200 members of the KDE project met at Trinity College in Dublin at the end of September for the week-long aKademy conference.

Ajax lets web developers concentrate on the important things and leave the browser abstraction to the libraries. Also in this issue, Cdrecord forked, Debconf in kilts, bugs squashed at Debian, and the latest news on Debian Etch.

The Esperantilo editor helps users write in the world language, and Kleansweep searches for dormant files. If you are an expert on compression algorithms, you can win 50.000 Euros. Also, the lowdown on the Cdrecord feud, and confirmation of the Etch release.

OSCON continues to grow in popularity and influence. Our Perlmeister stopped in for the talks, the tutorials, and the latest news from the battle lines of the digital millennium.

Controlling two desktops with a single set of input devices: X2X and Synergy let the mouse cursor cross seamlessly between the desktops on two machines. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales looks to revolutionize politics with his Wikia Campaigns project. French Debian developers join forces to found Debian France, and introducing the new graphical installer for Sarge.

OpenWRT puts Linux on WLAN routers and helps users set up large-scale WLANs at home, and the FreeWRT derivative adds a professional touch. If you don’t have your own compile farm, the OpenSUSE build service may be just what you need. And we investigate the obstacles to new packages for Debian.