It's no secret—anyone who wants to avoid supporting Vista is going to have a hard time buying a new computer. Most new computers come with Microsoft Windows preinstalled, and already it is difficult to find a machine not carrying Vista around on its back.

Many of you helped bring this concern to Dell by voting at their new feedback site. You said you wanted an option to buy a machine without Microsoft Windows preinstalled, or with a free software operating system.

The Free Software Foundation published a paper today entitled, “The road to hardware free from restrictions” calling on major hardware vendors to recognize that they can have a mutually beneficial relationship with the free software community, and outlining the areas vendors should act in to make that a reality.

The paper is being sent by the FSF directly to the biggest manufacturers, but it's vital that users and consumers also communicate this message. It's nonsensical that people have to pay a premium on hardware to cover the cost of Microsoft Windows when they are just going to format the hard drive and install GNU/Linux as soon as they get the machine home.

You can start by giving the paper a digg.

Mark Roe sent this wallpaper in for you to enjoy. Thanks, Mark!

Hi, I'm Matt Lee, the chief webmaster for the GNU Project. This is my first article for BadVista.

Right now, the computer manufacturer Dell is offering you the chance to speak up and give your views on how they can best support GNU/Linux on Dell computers. Unfortunately, none of the distributions listed on Dell's poll appear on our list of free distributions due to their inclusion of non-free software; this includes binary firmware, binary video drivers and other proprietary software, like Flash.

Dell is in a rather unique position, since as a manufacturer of systems they can choose the hardware devices that go into their machines. If they were to build computers specifically for GNU/Linux, or at least ones that could accommodate GNU/Linux and other operating systems, then there's no reason why those machines couldn't be built to support a totally free distribution like gNewSense. Couple that with a free BIOS, and Dell could be onto something pretty huge.

If you're someone who's previously bought a computer from Dell, or would potentially buy a machine from them if they were to make support available to fully-free distributions like gNewSense, then please take a few minutes to complete their survey, and post in the comments below to show your support for this effort.

The Free Software Foundation has released a new discussion draft of the GNU General Public License, Version 3.

For the last eighteen years, the GPL has served as the main free software answer to proprietary licensing agreements used by companies like Microsoft.

As the GPL preamble says:

The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users.

In contrast, a typical Microsoft Vista EULA says:

The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways.

See the difference in attitude?

Revising the GPL—for the first time in fifteen years—has been a community process. The latest revision involved looking at over 600 comments from the public, plus two international conferences and the work of four dedicated discussion committees. The more people who are involved, the more likely GPLv3 will match the success of GPLv2. You can read about the changes and add your comments at http://gplv3.org/guide.

You can digg the story at http://digg.com/tech_news/Free_Software_Foundation_releases_third_discussion_draft_of_GPLv3.