Basically it’s stuff you can use without having to pay for it and without worrying about proprietary software issues.

Most of the criteria for inclusion in the Open Source Living revolve around the nature of the licensing for the product — it has to be freely redistributable, not discriminatory in its licensing, with source code available, etc.

To that end, the programs already listed in the Open Source Living Directory are something of a “who’s who” of open-source success stories: Firefox, OpenOffice, 7-Zip, and so on.

A fair number of Mac-specific open-source programs are also featured: Camino, Vienna, and NeoOffice.

The layout and design of the site are friendly and clean; it doesn’t look like something that was thrown together in an afternoon.

The following security issues were fixed:

• Referer-spoofing via window.location race condition
• Memory corruption vulnerabilities (rv:1.8.1.10)
• jar: URI scheme XSS hazard

Firefox 2.0.0.10 seems to be a lot more stable and not using as much memory. Maybe they’ve finally got the memory leaks under control?

2.3.1 fixes over twenty bugs. Some of the notable fixes are:

• Tagging support for Windows Live Writer
• Faster taxonomy database queries, especially tag intersection queries
• Link importer fixes
• Fixes for a login bug that affected those with a Blog Address different than their WordPress Address

Unfortunately, some security issues were found in 2.3.

There was an XSS problem that can be exploited if your php setup has register_globals enabled. For this reason, upgrading to 2.3.1 is advised.

Get WordPress 2.3.1 from the download page and enjoy.

The following security issues were fixed:

• URIs with invalid %-encoding mishandled by Windows
• XPCNativeWrapper pollution using Script object
• Possible file stealing through sftp protocol
• XUL pages can hide the window titlebar
• File input focus stealing vulnerability
• Browser digest authentication request splitting
• onUnload Tailgating
• Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.8.1.8)

Firefox 2.0.0.8 is also compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), although there are some known issues affecting some media plugins.

The Skype development recently released a new version of Skype with some bug fixes.

Here is the detailed list of what’s new in Skype version 3.5.0.214:

• change: Extras Manager updated to version 1.5.0.3
• bugfix: Skype sometimes crashed on receiving chat message
• bugfix: Skype sometimes crashed when handling mood message
• bugfix: Can’t resume call after putting it on hold in some cases
• bugfix: Video mood and chat messages sometimes displayed wrong thumbnails
• bugfix: On call transfer dialogue blocked and deleted contacts were shown
• bugfix: Phone number on Outlook contacts was not shown
• bugfix: On rare occasions Voice Mail download failed
• bugfix API: Switching to silent mode took too long

Be sure to go grab the latest version of Skype for your Operating System of choice.

According to the official release notes:

As these releases include only security and minor bugfixes they should not cause any plugin or theme compatibility issues, so you have no good excuse not to upgrade.

If you’re running WordPress, be sure to download the latest release. It only takes a moment and the upgrade process is really easy.

In recent weeks, the Apple iPhone was finally released but what about us BlackBerry users? We’d like some cool new iPhone looking icons too

In that case, you can turn your BlackBerry into an iBerry like I did by downloading the “iBerry” theme for your device.

So far the Research In Motion BlackBerry 7100, 8700 and 8800 are supported.

Subscribe to Comments 2.1 is a plugin that allows commenters on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments.

It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there for the simple reason that it helps foster a community around your blog by encouraging commenter’s to come back and stay engaged in the dialog.

It’s not a major release but there are a couple of small code improvements and it now properly supports the WordPress 2.2.x branch.

WPPA: http://me.mywebsight.ws/web/wppa/

SRG Clean Archives: http://www.geekwithlaptop.com/projects/clean-archives/