This week’s wrap-up of mailing list traffic for the GIMP image manipulation tool includes: “Dependencies in 1.4” … “Patches to 1.2.1” … “Win 32 Port and Batch Mode.”

In this issue of Kernel Cousin Debian: “New and Improved dpkg-shlibdeps” … “libc5: In or Out?” … “Mozilla 0.8 Update” … “Weekly Best-Of Summary of debian-user.” Brought to you by Prashanth Mundkur and edited by Zack Brown.

From Linux.com: “I remember signing a petition in July of 1999 with a desperate hope that Tribes 2 would be ported to Linux, and so did a few thousand others. Whether it had anything to do with a petition or not, a year and a half later, we’re creeping towards a Linux release of Tribes 2. Loki is doing a simultaneous port, in hopes of a common release date.”

“Satellite communications company Iridium Satellite said it has signed agreements with 13 service providers to offer voice and data services via its satellites when it launches its commercial service next month.” Airtime will sell around $1.50 per minute, as opposed to Motorola’s previous price point of $7 per minute. Full story at ZDNet UK.

Jon Panker writes “IBM’s Susan Whitney, vice president of its eServer marketing and sales, said Linux is ideal for business use. Whitney said IBM customers that are proving that include an oil company, which clustered up to 1,000 Intel X-series servers with Linux, and a retail chain, which is installing 15,000 Linux servers in its stores. The operating system is ready for file print, Web serving, distributed computing, commercial clustering and server consolidation, she said. Read the full story at searchEnterpriseLinux.com.“

The Chicago Tribune reports that electronics giant Motorola plans to slash an additional 7,000 employees from its workforce, this time in its cellular phone division. This brings Motorola’s total job cuts to 16,000 for this fiscal year, a ten percent reduction in its global staff since December 2000.

Info World reports that Microsoft plans to debut software next week that will enable Web services created with .NET to be used on platforms other than Windows. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed that those “other platforms” include Linux.

Version 2.2-beta of the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) is now available for review through March 31. FHS is a set of requirements and guidelines for file and directory placement under UNIX-like systems. View the FHS project page for the CVS guide, file download, and public comment submission guidelines.

The Wall Street Journal (via MSNBC) reports that Hitachi will announce later today that it plans to sell Unix servers from IBM. The announcement could position IBM as the lead Unix server supplier, unseating market leader and current Hitachi supplier Sun Microsystems. Analysts say the move is a “very big design win” for IBM.

The European Commission “is seeking a mandate from national governments to draft a pro software patent directive without first concluding the consultation process,” and Eurolinux are not happy about it. Read their open letter at LWN.net.