"Many people believe Linux and its development model needs to change because it does not appear to meet IBM-style requirements. Mark my words. IBM will change the way it does development before Linux will. In fact, judging from the announcements at the Linux World Conference and Expo in New York, they already are."

Oracle, Intel and IBM may be expending a lot of money and resources to lift Linux into enterprise IT shops, but any large commitments from customers remain a well-kept secret. Or they don't exist.

Microsoft's Product Activation technology has triggered a row in the company's official Whistler beta newsgroups, with testers threatening defection to Linux or piracy over the matter.

The NSA (for once) is serving the public interest by making it harder to subvert private as well as public systems and thus is preserving the foundations of our economy: the systems that run banking, communications, and other key services. Although the NSA's Security-Enhanced Linux prototype has several limitations, it still represents a huge step in the right direction.

Nautilus 1.0 Preview Release 3.0 will ship this week and Nautilus 1.0, minus some Web services technology, will ship within the next month, said Tom Goguen, Eazel's director of product marketing.

Corel chief Derek Burney was hoping to clinch the anticipated spin-off of Corel's Linux operation in time to trumpet it this week at LinuxWorld in New York. Alas, the deal hasn't come off yet and Burney has said that it could be another month in the making.

With the date-change bug a memory, partners are looking to Linux to provide the next mainframe boost. The reasoning is that traditional mainframe shops will take to Linux on the mainframe as a means for consolidating Unix servers, solutions providers say. Linux also may expand the mainframe market, luring customers who have never before purchased the big boxes.

"In this article I want to show you a few things you can do with a $50 TV card under Linux. This article expects you to know how to compile the kernel, and how to install general application on Linux."

"IBM and the other corporate powers are happy finally to have an alternative to Microsoft Windows. Don't underestimate the weight that the good, old ABM (anything but Microsoft) mentality plays in vendor and customer decisions."

IBM President Samuel Palmisano's keynote address at LinuxWorld Expo last week may have contained no surprises, but that's good news for Linux advocates as the company extends its commitment to Open Source systems. Within the keynote itself, the press conference that followed, and a cluster of product-specific announcements, the implied message from IBM management is, "We made the right decision in backing Linux.