On October 9th the UK Free Software Network - UKFSN.ORG - launched at Linux Expo.

UKFSN is an Internet Service Provider with a difference - all of the profits from the operation will be donated to fund Free Software projects in the UK.

Each month UKFSN will release a public statement clearly showing how much income was raised during the preceeding month and how much is cost to run the service. The surplus will then be paid to the Association for Free Software (http://www.affs.org.uk/) who have agreed to handle the distribution of the money raised.

The UK Free Software Network offers all the standard services one expects from an ISP including 0845 dialup access, email, web hosting and usenet. These standard offerings are beefed up with the inclusion of perl, PHP and python and MySQL support for the web hosting and extensive SPAM control measures in the email service.

The service is not just for geeks however. As well as subscription free Internet access and services UKFSN.ORG offers professional hosting options for businesses and domain registration services.

Business users will especially appreciate the WorldPay payment system perl module that has been written to support ecommerce transactions by UKFSN hosted sites.

UKFSN is being run by Jason Clifford, the person behind Definite Linux - the now defunct British Linux distribution.

The UKFSN website is http://www.ukfsn.org/ info@ukfsn.org for more information.

The Association for Free Software is a membership organisation which promotes and defends Free Software in the UK and is an associate organisation of the Free Software Foundation Europe.