ZDNet Interactive Week released a flock of Open Source stories this week. Here’s a quick rundown on each one:– Does openness help or hurt? – Is open code a help or a hindrance? That, of course, depends entirely upon who you talk to about that subject.

— Finding profit in partnership – Business and Open Source does indeed mix, as this profile of Open Source companies, including Red Hat, Digital Creations, Lutris Technologies, an CollabNet attests.

— Open Source code: A corporate building block – “If it’s developed n a volunteer basis, it’s free, and support depends on an appeal to an invisible crowd, how can it be any good?” That’s the phrase that’s heard less often around IT departments these days as Linux becomes a mainstay of many server rooms.

— Open options – Linux and Apache are far from the only Open Source success stories. What about OpenNMS, Tomcat, Velocity, and Zope? They’re all covered, briefly, in this column.

— Ulterior motives – “At first glance, the work seems so noble. After late nights and long hours, bleary-eyed programmers take their valuable code and toss it onto the Internet as a gift to the world. The ultimate sacrifice? Not exactly.”

From a press release at Yahoo: “Caldera International Inc. (Nasdaq: CALD – news),
the only company “Unifying UNIX with Linux for Business,” Monday announced the launch of the Caldera
Developer Network.

Caldera developers, including Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Independent Hardware Vendors
(IHVs), corporate in-house developers and members of the Open Source developer community, will have
early access to UNIX and Linux technologies, allowing them to develop on UNIX, on Linux or on a
combined UNIX and Linux platform.”

As ZDnet Interactive Week’s Charles Babcock points out, Linux and Apache are far from the only Open Source success stories. What about OpenNMS, Tomcat, Velocity, and Zope? They’re all covered, briefly, in this column.

ZDNet Interactive Week: “It started as a small rebellion – a warning shot fired at the
Windows monopoly by independent-minded programmers.
But the open source movement traditionally associated
with the happy penguin and the pierced, tattooed crowd is
increasingly moving into the enterprise, mingling
peacefully with commercial and proprietary code.”

ZDNET.co.uk: “Microsoft has quietly posted a second collection of Windows 2000 bug
fixes, indicating the official release of an update could come this week.

The software company last July released the first Windows 2000 bug
fix — or service pack — in a similar manner the weekend before the
official announcement of the update. Microsoft officials were
unavailable for comment.”

ZDNET.co.uk: “From the end of this month, eBay will stop sellers posting
hyperlinks to other sites, in an effort to stop buyers bypassing
its payment system.”

ZDNET.co.uk: “Opera 5.0 for Linux will have all the features of the
Windows-based version, plus a couple extra. It is also very,
very fast, according to the company.”

ZDNET.co.uk: “Wearable computing is a small industry that has gained some
attention, particularly for the offbeat nature of its products. Internet
habitués get a daily dose of it when visiting such sites as Slashdot.org,
which routinely augments some of its stories with a picture of
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates seemingly wearing a head-mounted
computer.”

The Register: “Microsoft is to supply USB 2.0 drivers for Windows XP after all.

Earlier this year, the software giant said XP would not support the next generation
serial connectivity system, preferring instead to focus on IEEE 1394 as the OS’
high speed peripherals interface.”

BBC: “The British inventor of the world wide web, Timothy Bermers-Lee, has been awarded fellowship of the Royal Society.”