Red Hat plans to spin off Fedora

-- Red Hat Inc. said it will create an independent foundation to oversee its Fedora open-source software initiative. Red Hat will still provide financial and engineering support for Fedora, but it hopes the Fedora Foundation will attract broader participation in projects. Mark Webbink, Red Hat"s deputy general counsel, likened the move to IBM"s spin-off of its Eclipse development framework last year.

EDS faces possible $166M write-down

-- Electronic Data Systems Corp. may be forced to write down as much as US$166 million in its second fiscal quarter due to problems with an undisclosed project. EDS said that by May 2, the end of its first quarter, it had invested that amount in the project. EDS blamed projections that the undertaking won"t "achieve anticipated benefits."

Lawson buys Swedish vendor

-- The ERP market continues to consolidate with Lawson Software Inc."s acquisition of Intentia International AB for $480 million in stock. The enterprise software company will operate under the Lawson name with U.S. headquarters in St. Paul, Minn., and international headquarters in Stockholm. The deal is expected to close by year"s end.

Intel discloses more about Yonah CPU

-- Intel Corp. has shed more light on its forthcoming dual-core mobile chip, confirming that the Yonah processor"s two cores will share a single bank of cache memory. Yonah, the dual-core version of Intel"s Pentium M processor, is slated to ship in the first quarter of 2006. Intel said Yonah has an integrated design that shares storage and power management resources within the chip.