ZDNet reports: “TurboLinux and Linuxcare have signed a letter of intent to
merge. The deal could further the progress of the fragmented
open-source movement in the enterprise sector and provide
a strong alternative to Red Hat Linux.”

Saint writes “Here’s my best go at a grandiose, ‘I am powerful’, hyped-up press release about something that’s good but not that big a deal:Houston, Texas: LinuxMedNews.com the leader in free and open source medical software news and resource information is proud to announce its latest contribution to the free and open source medical computing effort: LinuxMedNews Jobs/Classifieds/Career Development. This exciting new sub-site to the flagship LinuxMedNews.com can be found here and from the left of the LinuxMedNews home page by clicking the ‘Jobs/Classifieds’ link.Using the powerful Zope and Squishdot web publishing environments, readers can browse, search and post job listings, classified ads and career development information in easily searchable categories. Posts are viewable instantaneously. This classifieds section along with its Comprehensive Project List continues LinuxMedNews committment to help revolutionize medical education and practice through free and open source medical technologies.”

News.com reports on IBM’s attempt at copy protection, which allows songs “to be copied and sent from person to person as often as consumers want. But built-in restrictions would be triggered by the copies, permitting the next person in line on Napster or an e-mail chain to play the song only once, hear 30 seconds or hear nothing at all.” Widespread adoption hinges on the efforts of the music industry convincing the public to switch to copy-limiting media and playback devices.

ZDNet reports that the Open Source Development Lab will officially open this week. A joint project of IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, NEC, the the lab hopes to make Linux more reliable for enterprise computing needs. Plans for the lab’s location at the University of Portland have been scrapped in favor of less expensive digs in nearby Beaverton.

Kelly McNeill writes “In the face of this depressing trend, the Free Software/Open Source philosophy was like a breath of fresh air. For many years I had been an admirer of Richard Stallman. I was grateful that at last his views were coming to fruition. Open Source projects seemed to have something — not just a sense of quality, but also of guiding principles — of an ethical base that commercial projects did not have. In short, Open Source programmers were honest. They were up-front about bugs.”

A post to a gnome.org mailing list announces that this year’s GNOME Users and Developers European Conference (GUADEC) will take place in Copenhagen from April 6 – 8, 2001. But wait, there’s more: “Best of all, we want to provide financial help to GNOME hackers who want to attend the conference but need help paying for the plane ticket and hotel. If you need financial help, we would like you to answer a few questions on the GUADEC site.”

From LWN.net: “Trustix is, like many other linux distributions, based on Glibc 2.1.3
and is therefore open to the “preload hole” discussed in various
postings to bugtraq and other lists. This is a local security hole,
and all users of TSL should upgrade their boxes.”

– by Dan Berkes –
Tuesday morning, Linux Global Partners is expected to announce that it has acquired most of Corel’s Linux properties, likely ending the Canadian software vendor’s foray into the world of Open Source software.The first indications that Corel wanted out of the Linux business came last November at COMDEX, the annual computer industry trade show in Las Vegas. At that time, CEO Derek Burney insisted that Corel was merely “refocusing” its Linux strategy.

That refocusing effort will conclude with the sale of most of its Linux product line to Linux Global Partners. The New York-based investment firm has made a name for itself in the Open Source community, funding popular Open Source efforts including Ximian (formerly Helix Code) and its GNOME desktop, and financial program GNU Cash.

On Tuesday, January 23, Corel is expected to state that they will continue to support Linux with “behind-the-scenes” support and services; the company has not yet ruled out serving a wide range of platforms as an applications service provider. However, the company’s primary focus will shift to its Windows development efforts, including a recent $135 million agreement with Microsoft to work on popularizing the Redmond giant’s much-hyped .NET development tools.

While the identity of Corel’s Linux suitor is no longer a mystery, exactly what Linux Global Partners plans to do with its new purchases has yet to be determined. Possibilities include continuing current brands, licensing the name from Corel, creating an entirely new brand, or perhaps even dividing the spoils among the companies and developers it funds.

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our discussion page.

LWN.net posts the latest edition of Dr. Dobb’s weekly Tcl news and links. In this issue: “8th Annual Tcl/Tk conference in San Diego” … “Rumors on MS Outlook Express using Tcl” … “Volunteers (?) maintain what was formerly the highly organized Scriptics Tcl resource center.”

LWN.net recaps last week’s Linux kernel and related news: “The current kernel release remains 2.4.0” … “Disk corruption with 2.4.0 and VIA IDE chipsets” … “Who’s the fastest web server of all?” … “So what is ReiserFS, anyway?”