CRN via TechWeb reports on Linus Torvalds’ answer to a question about making money with Linux, during a discussion at Comdex: “I can give you an analogy from the past. One
‘company’ that used to hold the truth was the Catholic
church. The church made a lot of money by having a
proprietary truth. All the richest people were religious
people. The Pope had a lot more money than the scientists.
The analogy is that the truth became open, like open
source, and the truth was science. I believe open source
and Linux is about the same thing. Sure, we broke the lock,
but we opened the lock and opened the door to go past
Microsoft where the whole market expands, and the end
result is going to be a lot more money.”

Slashdot readers discuss this little nugget: “The people at Merilus have grabbed a PCI card, embedded Linux,
added some Ethernet ports and come up with the FireCard. The OS on the host
system can crash out, without affecting your firewall. Once installed, the
FireCard provides firewalling, routing, bandwidth management, virtual private
networking, redundant failover, intrusion detection and much more.”

IDG.net reports on the number of Transmeta sightings at Comdex, including Sony’s Viao PictureBook and two Hitachi products. Some companies are “believers that the chipmaker’s processor is ideal for smaller portable machines.”

Linux World has a column on a Samba, the most common Open Source file and print server, and how to avoid the “potential quirks” while using it.

From use.perl.org: “Komodo, ActiveState’s cross-platform, cross-language Integrated
Development Environment based on the Mozilla application development
framework, is available in pre-beta for download. The Technology Preview
Release has support for Windows NT/2000. Support for other platforms will be available very soon.”

Joe Barr is on a campaign against the BSA campaign – read the rant at Penguinista.org:”The BSA, an organization of software publishers which presents itself as a faux-officious police enforcement bureau, is conducting a global campaign of threats, bullying, and terror on behalf of Microsoft and other of its members. The goal of the campaign is to frighten users of unlicensed software into buying legitimate, licensed copies.” -Submitted by Brent Toderash

Australian IT rates Intel’s forthcoming processor: “So how fast is it? Very. But not nearly as fast as you’d want it to be, for the money.”

ZDNet News reports from Comdex: the second coming of USB is on the way, as developers raise the curtain on new products designed for the latest version of the protocol. USB 2.0 promises to deliver up to 480Mbits/sec for external peripherals.

Corel’s deal with Microsoft hardly spells the end of the company’s Linux products, chief executive Derek Burney claims. Corel is “refocusing” — not relinquishing — its Linux products and plans, the Canadian software vendor’s chief executive Derek Burney insisted Monday. From a ZDNet News report.

The Register reports that Palm is finally offering an upgrade to version 3.5 of its PalmOS. The download is available as part of an upgrade kit that brings cell phone Internet connectivity to older Palm devices for $39.95 or as a download for $14.95.