ZDNet reports that Judge Jackson, responsible for the breakup order against Microsoft, has recused himself from the most recent case involving Microsoft before the courts. He defended his actions (of speaking in public about the case), but said he was not being biased, but understood how it could be interpreted as such.

A Gartner analyst, writing on CNet says the Linux market is facing an economic downturn separating the strong companies from the weak. “Gartner has always advised companies to proceed cautiously in the face
of the enormous hype. But Linux enthusiasm is not fading away entirely — although it’s probably
quickly approaching the ‘trough of disillusionment’ in the Gartner Hype Cycle. Some
reassessment of where Linux really fits into an enterprise’s IT infrastructure was inevitable.”

F**ckedcompany.com has this rumor (and we repeat, rumor): “Rumor has it Chilliware, a Linux software company with over 500 employees in India, Armenia and Los Angeles, is about to lay off (this Friday or so) all but 8 of their L.A. staff.”

Kelly McNeill writes: “The latest trend in ‘user-friendliness’ is allowing users to extensively modify the interface of applications by applying ‘skins’ or ‘themes.’ This goes far beyond changing colors and fonts; themes can drastically change the appearance of an application, and even change the functionality. Themes began with media players such as Winamp and RealJukebox, and now seem to be spreading, kudzu-like, into other application categories and operating systems themselves. Proponents tout them as a way to help people bond with their software. I have
a proposal for what to do with most themes: get rid of ’em.” The column is at osOpinion.

– by Tina Gasperson –
Eazel has had a rollercoaster of a day. This morning, the company announced the release of Nautilus 1.0, and this afternoon 40 of its marketing, sales, and engineering people became former employees.Aaron Brick, one of the unfortunate recipients of a pink slip, was a research and testing engineer for Eazel, founded in August 1999 by former Apple developers hoping to improve the Linux desktop. Brick says his boss, who also lost his job, told him about the situation today just before a company-wide meeting took place during which the bad news was officially delivered.

Brick seemed matter-of-fact about losing his job. “I’m just going to look for a new job,” he said. “Hopefully it will be Open Source, but I’m not holding my breath.” Brick says he is receiving three weeks severance pay.

Greg Wood, press contact for Eazel, confirmed the layoffs. “Basically, Eazel is laying off 40 people out of 75,” he said. “Brian Croll, v.p. of Marketing, is the one marketing person staying.” Wood said that Eazel wiped out its marketing and sales departments and is hanging on to the remaining 34 (not counting Croll), who are on the programming and developing side.

Brick, who wasn’t in marketing or sales but still lost his job, had a slightly different take on the layoff percentages. “Basically, the only people left are the ones who were working directly on Nautilus. They wiped out the quality engineering department, labs, and the services engineering team.”

Why did Eazel do this? Wood’s answer was fairly predictable, given the current downturn in the market. “Eazel grew very quickly because when they were coming together as a company, the environment was a lot different than it is today. The layoffs reflected the new sober environment that Linux is facing. While there’s still growth, it just has to be scaled back.

“This is something they did not want to have to do.”

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our discussion page.

At mozillaquest.com is the third part of a new regular MozillaQuest Magazine column designed to help Microsoft Windows users better understand and use Linux, and Linux software. “Today, let’s get the K desktop running in Red Hat Linux 7 and then make it look and feel more like the Microsoft Windows desktop.”

Reuters reports that several educators are telling Congress a
“proposed modification to copyright law would make it easier to
include snippets of songs and movies in materials for students who
take classes over television or the Internet.” Two senators have introduced a bill that would exempt educators from fees to
use copyrighted materials in distance-learning programs.

From LinuxPR: OSDN, the Open
Source Development Network, and BRIE, the Berkeley Roundtable on the
International Economy, will hold a one-day symposium on “Rethinking Business
in Light of Open Source” on April 18, 2001 in San Francisco, California.

Panelists and attendees will examine and debate the Open Source movement
and how it is challenging current notions of competition, collaboration and
intellectual property in businesses across the globe. (NewsForge is part of OSDN.)

From BusinessWire: Caldera Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CALD), the only Linux company to license,
build, certify and support SUN Microsystems’ Java on Linux, Tuesday announced an agreement with Lutris to ship the Enhydra Open
Source Java/XML application server with the next release of Caldera’s OpenLinux server product, code named “Project 42.”
In addition, Caldera and Lutris will participate in cooperative product launch activities.

From LinuxPR: LikeTelevision’s Dynamic
Ad Casting software is an automated video insertion solution that manages
content programming. On-demand video content can now be controlled to
create a television-like experience through insertion of commercial advertising
spots. It’s optimized for the L.A.M.P. platform
(Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP).