The partnership allows for a co-branded service where Red Hat users can access the range of tools, functionality and content offered by Guru.com. The alliance will take full advantage of Guru.com's project matching capabilities and offer Red Hat corporate customers access to some of the most qualified open source IT talent available.

IBM announced at Comdex Las Vegas that IBM would join the new KDE League and partner with Trolltech, Mandrake and others to continue work on IBM's ViaVoice voice recognition software for the KDE desktop.

Ericsson says the appliance will become more of an open platform, and Red Hat is working on a seamless way of downloading appropriate applets, making this the first Linux appliance with pretensions to being a platform, rather than somewhere where the Penguin remains hidden behind the curtains.

Many observers have suggested that the only means of guaranteeing that votes are fairly tabulated is to develop a system based on an auditable, Open Source software platform.

Many observers have suggested that the only means of guaranteeing that votes are fairly tabulated is to develop a system based on an auditable, Open Source software platform.

A study from Zona research emerged earlier this week and it has, in some eyes, produced some rather worrying figures. The company set about with the aim of determining the state of Linux deployments, the factors that lead to such deployments and the user perception of the operating system. What it found though will do little to further the cause of the open source movement.

In a move that underlines the increasingly competitive nature of the open-source world, Caldera Systems has hired a key Linux programmer formerly employed by rival company Turbolinux.

There's no shortage of evidence to support this, particularly as large vendors such as IBM continue to embrace and actively promote the platform. Federal agencies are also turning to Linux. They recently called on Linux vendors to work aggressively toward its certification and approval, thereby giving agencies a much-wanted alternative to proprietary software, notably Windows systems from Microsoft.

Intel's e-Business Forum, held in Sydney, was promoted as a showcase of e-business success stories for the Intel platform. The event was not without Linux input, with Mark White, vice president and general manager of Red Hat Asia Pacific, giving a talk on how Red Hat Linux and open source software in general is being used to create successful e-business ventures.

What is fascinating about the international side of Linux is that I've met a lot of people outside of the U.S. who are just doing their own thing and not just translating U.S.-based programs for their own locale. All these people can make their own decisions, and that's more important than IBM selling 15,000 terminals

in Japan.