Kernel release: 2.4.26-pre4, Mar 16, 2004

2.4.26-pre4 has been released today.
See changelog for full details.

Files added: 23
Files changed: 441
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At first glance, the company Employease seems unremarkable. But look a little closer. Employease, which provides employee benefits administration services to more than 1,000 organizations across America, has an IT architecture chiefly built around open-source software, which makes it a rare bird—not that it was planned that way when the company was founded in 1996.

"It's been quite a surprise to me. The open-source model just seems intuitively wrong," says John Alberg, the company's cofounder, CIO, CTO and vice president of engineering. But the facts speak for themselves.

As always, KDE is easy on the eyes. I love the anti-aliased fonts, the more or less consistent user interface, and the ability to share data across applications. The number and quality of applications and utilities that ship with the standard desktop is hard to beat, too, but what has always impressed me is the availability of hundreds of high-quality KDE-ready applications. There seems to be no shortage of applications that are "K-ready," that is, programs that have been adapted (or, just as likely, written from scratch) to fit into the Qt-based KDE application framework.

The Canadian Linux Users' Exchange, a non-profit organization mandated to increase professionalism, exposure and participation of Linux by corporate, government and academic environments across Canada, is sponsoring an Open Source Weekend at Carleton University, Ottawa, on Saturday March 27. Organized by an Ottawa-area coalition of computer professionals, students and volunteers, the conference showcases what open-source software can do for both private businesses and public sector organizations.

As I was doing my billing recently, I remarked to my boss that I always feel bad billing for services I enjoy doing. "Sure," he replied, "and wouldn't it be great if everyone chipped in to help pay your mortgage and feed your kids? Oh, wait. That's called communism." He's right, and it's a sobering context in which to consider open source.

If we follow my boss's line of thinking, open source, or "free software," might be considered communism. But to business and IT managers, open source isn't about code we don't have to pay for. In this case, free means freedom, as in the freedom to choose and use software as we wish, with no proprietary barriers.

A New York-based startup is preparing to offer "open source insurance" to some of the largest corporations in the world in response to legal concerns like the one being played out by SCO Group.

Open Source Risk Management, which provides consulting services as well as vendor-neutral indemnification to clients, is expected to debut an expanded range of business services this week, including insurance against open source litigation. After several months in stealth mode, the VC-backed company is officially launching at this week's Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.

Hewlett-Packard has begun selling Linux PCs in 12 Asian countries.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company plans to tout the Asian Linux machines Tuesday, the same day the first Open Source Business Conference begins in San Francisco. The systems will run Turbolinux's software, a version of the open-source operating system based on Novell's SuSE Linux, and are geared for business buyers, HP said in a statement.

HP's desktop models, the dx2000 and cd5000, were announced--barely--last week. In that news release, HP avoided touting the Linux option, saying that the systems were available with Microsoft Windows "or alternative operating systems." In interviews, though, HP said the models came with MandrakeSoft's version of Linux.

2.6.5-rc1 has been released today.
See changelog for full details.

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