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?”

LWN.net has the latest Linux kernel news from Alan Cox.

LWN.net has announced that it will present several events at the LinuxWorld Expo, happening next week in New York. Executive Editor Elizabet Coolbaugh will present a tour of Linux distributions, Author and “Graphics Muse” Michael Hammel will look at Linux tools for graphic designers, and Dennis Tenney will lead a system and network security tutorial.

From a press release at LinuxPR: “Open Source Development Network (OSDN.com), a division of VA Linux
Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:LNUX), has announced that SourceForge.net,
the world’s largest ASP for Open Source developers, now supports
over 100,000 registered users. Since its official launch a year ago,
SourceForge.net has expanded its base of supported projects to more
than 13,000, including major projects such as MySQL, Tcl, Python,
XFree86, KDE and Squid.” (Disclosure: VA Linux owns NewsForge)

Kelly McNeill writes “Every week or so a new company creates its own distribution of Linux. Every other week a new program is ported over to Linux. Every month a new feature is inserted into Linux. And every year a major change is incorporated that expands the OS’s capabilities. One major problem is that every change that makes the OS better is happening in multiple locations independent of the rest of the companies. That’s like replacing the carpet in your home a square foot at a time.”