A story at ZDNet says the Nautilus project will thrive, even if Eazel doesn’t survive, thanks to the GPL. “The GPL ensures developers and users alke that the code will have a life of its own, apart from the economic health of any associated commerical vendors.”

Wired.com reports that Germany’s Defense Ministry says it’s still using Microsoft products, “despite a report in a
leading magazine saying security concerns would lead it to seek an alternative.

A Defense Ministry official flatly denied a report in Der Spiegel that German officials were banning Microsoft operating
systems because they were concerned about a possible backdoor built into them by the U.S. National Security Agency.”

ZDNet has a column debating the issue of diversity vs. conformity in the Linux community. “Commercial software vendors have a legitimate beef with the current
state of Linux. There are three ways to build an application that runs on
multiple distributions of Linux, none of them particularly smooth.”

LinuxPower.org interviews coder Stefan Seefeld of the Berlin Project, “the project which most people refer to
when alternatives to X are being discussed.”

From LWN.net: “imap is a package which contains POP3 and IMAP mail servers.

These vulnerabilities can be exploited only after user
authentication, which basically limits the scope of the vulnerability
to a remote shell with that user’s permissions. On systems where
users already have a shell, this vulnerability will not provide
anything new to that user (unless he/she has only local shell
access). But, on systems where the email accounts do not provide
shell access (tipically ISPs), this is a bigger problem.
It is also important to note that packages from version 5.1 or higher
of the CL distribution have been compiled with StackGuard, which
makes it more difficult (but not impossible) to exploit buffer
overflows of this type.

From a ComputerWorld column: “What is it with Microsoft and open source? It’s not so
complicated. Microsoft hates the competition from open source.
Microsoft loves the benefits of open source. Microsoft wants the
customers who like open source. Microsoft doesn’t want to let any of
its intellectual property turn into open source.

An impossible-to-resolve set of contradictions? Not to Microsoft.”

ComputerWorld has a story about The World Bank Group considering Open Source application service providers. “Like other organizations considering open-source technology, most of the
World Bank’s debate was based on the business benefits. [Gerhard] Pohl and others
say the bottom-line rationale for using open-source applications is
compelling for almost every organization.”

From PR Newswire: Zuma Networks,
Inc., a leading-edge provider of layer 2/3/4 switch-routing/IP service
delivery platforms, and Stonesoft Corporation, (HEX: SFT1V), a leading
provider of enterprise-level security and high availability software
solutions, today announced a strategic partnership to deliver the next level
of scalable, high-availability security platforms. The companies are
integrating Stonesoft’s StoneGate(TM) high-availability firewall and VPN
software into Zuma Network’s LightReef layer 2/3/4 switch-routing/IP
service delivery platform. Together, the company technologies will deliver
the industry’s most scalable, all-in-one switching, security and clustering
firewall/VPN platform.

Zuma
Networks LightReef switch routing platforms integrate layer 2/3/4 switching
and multi-processing Linux IP services in a scalable and open platform.

Salon.com has the second part of a story on DivX Networks. “Despite DivX
Networks’ popularity with
hackers and support from open-source software developers, the
company still has a long way to go before it realizes its grand
ambition — becoming the standard for digital video compression
online.” Also, check out the Slashdot discussion about the story.

ZDNet has a look back on IBM’s competition with Sun in the server space. “It wasn’t part of the initial plan, but an unexpected force arrived to inject energy into IBM’s server
overhaul: Linux. The operating system, though not the easy road to riches many start-ups had
hoped, has shaken Microsoft out of its leisurely assault on Unix.”