The US government has passed, pending approval from the President, a bill increasing the number of foreigners allowed to come to the US for high-tech work. NW Fusion has the story.

ZDNet Inter@ctive Investor is reporting on the US Department of Justice’s latest attempt to shorten the Microsft Anti-Trust case appeals process.

ZDNet discusses why Napster imitation sites are not having Napster’s success, and what is missing.

Inter@ctive Week reports on Atipa setting its sites on Va Linux by acquring Open Source network managment/systems managment company OpenNMS.org. “The OpenNMS.org open-source project has created an early version of its network and systems management software, dubbed Bluebird, for companies based on the Internet.” (Disclosure: VA Linux owns NewsForge.)

The Meta Group (via CNet) has its own opinion on why Microsoft pumped $135 million into Linux-friendly software developer Corel: “Microsoft is propping up
the only effective competitor to Office and thereby buying
insurance against a future Justice Department lawsuit.

In addition, this deal is a side bet on the Linux market and could be
the start of a Microsoft strategy to port its .Net technology to Linux in
a controlled way, while limiting Microsoft’s own risk.”

From a Wired.com story: “The way current regulations are written, you could probably
get a patent for the practice of selling hair dryers over the Internet. If two
congressional Democrats get their way, the days of ‘obvious’ business
practice patents are numbered.”

FreeDevelopers will be owned and run by all developers worldwide together
on a democratic basis in a sacred trust for the benefit and protection of the
world’s citizens through free software. It will pay all developers to work on
free software. All software of the free company will be licensed under the
GPL and remain free forever. (It’s in our corporate constitution). The press release is at LinuxPR.

LinuxDevices.com has opened up the product listing area of its popular
“Embedded Linux Portal” website for free product listings from companies in
the Embedded Linux Market. Note: the listings are free — the products
aren’t necessarily free 😉

Effective immediately, all companies offering products or services that
pertain to using Linux in embedded systems or devices are invited to submit
Product Listings, at no charge. The press release is at LinuxPR.

The Canadian Press reports that
Derek J. Burney was
named president and
chief executive of Corel
Corp. on
Tuesday, a position he
had held on an interim
basis since August. The announcement comes fresh after an investment deal with Microsoft.

Linux.com has posted an article on Linux based software synthesizers.