Kosovo needs Free Software. Free as in charge and free to tinker with its code, build upon it and offer services around it. Free Software encourages experimentation, provides total ownership at a low cost and builds local software industry. Free Software is becoming the preferred choice as many European cities and even national governments across the world push for Free Software adoption seeking to control costs and own the source code in perpetuity.

The relations between Serbia and Kosovo are not as bad as they look. But that is probably because both sides are trying to make them look as bad as they can, so that the extremely pale understanding they reach at the end will look as though it is something. The signs that a compromise may come are quiet and below the surface, just as it is likely that any upcoming measures of agreement will probably remain unannounced.

Thousands of Albanians in the Presheva Valley (southern Serbia) gathered on January 28 in the city of Presheva to demand the immediate release of ten Albanian men who were arrested by the Serbian paramilitary police last month for alleged war crimes during the 1999 war in Kosova. Most of the men were tortured and then transferred to prison in Belgrade. The protesters also called for amnesty for the local fighters who fought Serb forces in the Presheva Valley from 2000 to 2001, a conflict that ended in a peace agreement brokered by NATO, the United States, and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The day before the protests, Albanian political parties in Presheva issued a joint declaration, calling on the international community to "mediate talks between the Serbian government and Albanian political representatives to evaluate a seven-year-old peace process and to stop the deterioration of the political and security situation."

We have now entered a decade since American involvement ended Serbia’s rule over Kosova. This means that a decade has gone by with Kosova having been under UNMIK (United Nations Mission in Kosovo), with its core purpose of “nation-building.” The truth of the matter is, when looking back, we find that the country’s path to statehood can only be understood in plurals. There is not one factor, and there is not one specific date that can be praised or blamed for. It is a combination of many, a result of internal struggles and external interests. It is an outcome of power shifts, national renaissance, oppression and disintegration. If all these conditions have paved the path to our present, policies of this past decade too are a product of such factors; but not necessarily of the same ones. The important part of this reality, which needs to be changed, is that the Kosovar Albanian interest has not played an active role in the past ten years. This is mostly a failure of ours to show determination towards what truly concerns us.