Increased security and ease of use are some changes Red Hat is promising in its 7.0 release due out Sept. 25. Maximum Linux has a preview.

Reuters has a follow-up story on some Open Source advocates boycotting the $10,000 secure music challenge, sponsored by the
Secure Digital Music Initiative. The “big five” major record labels
are all founding members of SDMI.

theKompany.com, a producer of Linux developer software including
the second-tier developer distribution PowerPlant, announces
the availability of Kugar v1.0, a business report generation and viewer tool for KDE. The
press release is at LinuxPR.

Linuks.net has a chat about Cisco patenting NAT. “It turns out that Cisco has a patent on a security system for network address translation
systems. Depending on your reading of the patent and what it really covers, this could be one
of the more threatening software patents to come along yet. NAT has been a feature of Linux networking for years … “

Slashdot readers discuss a report that some Microsoft employees are
unhappy that the Myth servers ran on Linux, after Myth-maker Bungie Studios was acquired by Microsoft earlier this year. The original article is at InsideMacGames.com.

MandrakeSoft, the publisher of the
Linux-Mandrake operating system, announced that it intends to
reinforce its image to both individual and corporate users. In order to offer
them the most suitable solutions, MandrakeSoft will be launching strategic
partner programs designed for different market players including software
and hardware vendors, as well as with systems integrators. Check out the press release at LinuxPR.

The Linux Journal has a how-to article on “tweaking old Tux for fun,
performance and a better knowledge of the innards of your Linux system.”

Jabber, the only open source,
extensible instant messaging platform, today surpassed 10,000 server
downloads with more than 1,000 of these servers now actively deployed on
the Internet. This marks a 100 percent increase in the number of
downloaded servers in the last two months and an increase of more than ten
times the number of servers in active deployment in the same period. The press release is at LinuxPR.

Slashdotters discuss a review of Debian 2.2 on the dukeofurl.org.

Reuters is reporting (OK, this gets a bit strange: Inter@ctive Week has a Reuters story that reports on a Washington Post story) that the FCC is backing the AOL-Time Warner merger. The FCC’s staff has recommended the agency approve the $183 billion merger, if the firms agree to conditions on Internet access. Here’s the actual Washington Post story. The FCC later denied the report, according to Bloomberg News.