Offering a free clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux turned out not to be such a simple matter after all.

The CentOS project aims to reproduce Red Hat's tested, supported, and certified version of the operating system, without its per-server subscription fees. Because RHEL is open-source software, it's theoretically possible for an outsider to select the same software packages, apply the same patches, and produce a version of the Linux product that works the same.

But several lead programmers...

Thunderbird 3 beta 3 is now available to download for Windows, Mac, and Linux users. The beta introduces some significant improvements to the open-source desktop client, from performance to interface.

The new beta is built on Mozilla's Gecko 1.9.1.1 platform, keeping it up to date with the latest changes that affect Firefox. Mozilla also claims that there are more than 500 changes in this version, and hints at more alterations to come by stating in a press release that many of them are ''la...