From a press release at Linux PR: eZ systems released two new open source Web portal and Web shopping solutions. eZ trade provdes secure shopping and site administration tools for small to medium size online shopes. eZ pubish is aimed at online portals and news sites, featuring secure administration and membership registration services.

Charles Babcock at Interactive Week reports on the state of Linux clustering, and the tools that are making such computing arrays easier than ever to assemble. Products discussed include offerings from SGI, TurboLinux, and VA Linux. (Full disclosure: VA Linux owns NewsForge.)

ZDNet eWEEK reports that Motorola and IBM are set to announce further support for the Bluetooth. Motorola plans to combine Bluetooth with its modem products, and IBM is ready to start licensing its Blue Drekar software driver for development of the wireless protocol on Linux.

From a CNET story: VA Linux Systems warned Monday that its fiscal fist-quarter results will not meet expectations because of slower than expected sales growth from new customers in the dot-com sector. (Disclosure: VA Linux owns NewsForge.)

An article on SecurityFocus discusses Quova’s new Internet scanning service. Called GeoPoint, the system is able to match up IP addresses with physical locations. During GeoPoint’s construction phase, Quova’s network probes aroused the ire of system administrators who “likened the scanning to a burglar looking for unlocked doors, while others complained about the false alarms the probes produced.”

Slashdot readers discuss an analysis of the new Amiga Virtual Processor assembly language.

Dennis Fisher at ZDNet eWEEK continues speculation on the Napster-Bertelsmann deal. “Among the issues that the new partnership must eventually address: other major record labels that are working on their own paid download services; the existence of alternative free file-sharing programs, such as Gnutella; and the biggest issue of all — users’ willingness to pay for online music.” Sara Robinson at Interactive Week says “Napster’s alliance with Bertelsmann could finally give the beleaguered music service something it’s been lacking: a business model.”

LinuxFocus.org:While the big companies were trying to sell expensive licenses, the Free Software Foundation was trying to spread
the concept of free software. Free meant freedom to run the program, to modify the program, to distribute copies
or modified copies for the benefit of the community, but not always for free (you may charge for it). If you want to
learn more about it, just go to http://www.gnu.org.
Many people were attracted by this philosophy and at the beginning of the 90’s there were different flavors of free
Unix: NetBSD, Linux…
Today, about 50 commercial or free Unixes are available (may be more!).
So what?

GNU.org on its front page under the heading “GNUs Flashes” says “Please
support the FreeDevelopers.net project. FreeDevelopers.net is a democratic
entity for the development of free software,” with links to the
FreeDevelopers.net site. From LinuxPR.com.

Weta’s primary rendering resource is based on SGI 1200 Linux servers, says TheOneRing.net.