UK Open Source Media Watch

James Gosling interviewed by Jack Schofield in today’s Guardian.

Judging this weird story from The Builder isn’t possible right now as the key part is said to be at
http://www.linuxpersonas.com/
whose sole content currently is the message

This material is being updated and will be made available to Microsoft partners shortly.

This story has been around for a while (it appeared last year here in The Independent!) so its appearance in today’s Guardian is a little puzzling. Much more puzzling is the total absence in these reports and Computer Aid International’s Annual Report of any mention of software.

Here from Computerworld.com is six-page piece by Sharon Machlis, its online managing editor, asking the question

Are you looking for a Windows alternative for serious office work? Many people are starting to wonder about their non-Microsoft operating system options, especially given Windows Vista’s hefty hardware demands, upgrade costs and license restrictions.

and coming to the conclusion that

After several weeks, I can report that desktop Linux does appear ready for no-frills home users. But things get a bit more dicey for corporate users like me.

Now that Sinn Fein and the DUP are on the verge of an agreement (BBC news item here) could the parties to the free v. open wrangle at least agree not to provide ammunition for this kind of piece in Information Week (or anywhere else!). No doubt the protagonists will brand the report slanted and unfair but, to a relative newcomer to the FLOSS scene, it looks mightily counterproductive.

This story has been around for about a week, with Microsoft’s press release being pretty much reproduced by dozens of outlets; this short piece in Computing seems to have been (one of?) the first. There is a longer item at Computer Business Review emphasising Novell’s perspective and one from eWeek looking at it from the bank’s point of view.
Much is being made of the assertion, from both HSBC and Microsoft, that the deal will enable the bank to reduce its TCO for Linux. This is ZDNet’s take; for an in-character piece from the Inq look here.

This piece from Internetnews.com reports that

Brad Abrams, group program manager at Microsoft for ASP.NET AJAX … declared that Microsoft is not the cathedral and that open source isn’t really a bazaar when it comes to AJAX, a claim that undermines one of the core underpinnings of the open source movement.

There is a bit more about AJAX and open source in this article entitled “Is Microsoft Finally Ready to Play Nice” from Redmondmag.com. Another, wide-ranging, article claims that

Microsoft veers toward the light in its new approach to open source

giving much of the credit to Bill Hilf. Steve Ballmer’s recently repeated threats against Linux (reported here in news.com) are not mentioned.

Remondmag.com describes itself as the independent voice of the Microsoft IT community and is not saying that the walk is being walked.

Glyn Moody in Linux Journal looks at the same evidence and, highlighting

Microsoft’s determination to ram its own OpenXML through the ISO standards process

recommends wariness to the FLOSS community and a history lesson to Microsoft.

How did we miss this on Forbes.com a month or so back and the thousands of follow-ups?

This jargon-free piece in the highly prestigious MIT Technology Review is just the thing to show your boss, partner, MP, … or anyone important who thinks FLOSS is just for geeks.

According to this on the amazing Grolaw, quoting this piece on Computer World

The International Standards Organization (ISO) agreed Saturday to put Open XML, the document format created and championed by Microsoft Corp., on a fast-track approval process that could see Open XML ratified as an international standard by August.

At the time of posting, this appears to have been decided by one individual in the secretariat of ISO’s Joint Technical Committee (JTC-1) on Information Technology.
Start here for previous Media Watch postings on the campaigning around this important and controversial topic. It could well be necessary to re-ignite the campaign - we will try to keep you posted.

The Boston Globe tells the unlikely tale of

a bunch of Danes who seem to have missed the meeting that made clear this was just a metaphor. “Free as in free software,” they explained when rolling out Free Beer, or, as their website now says, “Free as in free speech.”

… says the headline of this piece in The Noblesville Ledger; does this local newspaper in Indiana know something we don’t? Unhappily not; for the good folk of Hamilton County, NHS is the TLA for Noblesville High School so only a small victory for open source.
Warming to the theme of open source in education, here is another story, this time from DesktopLinux, of a school district moving over to Linux, and yet another, reported by Ohio’s ThisWeek Community Newspaper.
A longish piece from South Korean outlet OhMyNews examines the consequences of the finding that

there are currently over 400,000 computers at schools in Japan running on either Windows 98 or Windows Me, systems no longer supported by the software manufacturer Microsoft. The prohibitive cost of replacing these machines with newer models, as well as the rising price of proprietary software, prompted school teachers and administrators to propose the possibility of switching to open-source software as an affordable alternative.

and finally, from the Online Education Database and a life-long learning perspective, another long piece entitled How the Open Source Movement Has Changed Education: 10 Success Stories

“Were they ever out?” one might ask, but this week:

CNET has this piece from Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith offering Two cheers for intellectual-property law and opining that

nothing is more effective at focusing attention on the arcane subject of patent law than a $1.52 billion jury verdict–in a case that could affect everyone who uses digital music

Forbes has this that

Under threat of new multimillion euro fines, Microsoft Corp. said Thursday that it had signed up its first licensee for a program EU regulators told it to set up three years ago to share code that helps servers work with the Windows operating platform.

and here in The Guardian, Wendy Grossman asks Will the EU ruling against Microsoft have unintended consequences? concluding that

before you pop the champagne corks, consider: is this any way to run a patent regime?

No surprise about that, except open source was the issue.
Reported here on ZDNet are these comments from George Osborn MP, the shadow chancellor:

Too many companies are frozen out of government IT contracts, stifling competition and driving up costs. Not a single open-source company is included in Catalyst, the government’s list of approved IT suppliers. [One of the problems is] a government IT system … incompatible with other types of software, which stifles competition and hampers innovation.

The speech can be read in full here, on the Conservative Party website.
He made similar comments on the BBC’s Today programme; go to the BBC website here to hear the interview.

The launch earlier this week in the Houses of Parliament of the National Open Centre is reported by The Reg (including a photo - spot yours truly!), Public Technology, Linux World, and PC Advisor.

… for
the NYT hoax which gives The Reg pause for thought and comment here;
conservapedia about which this entry on Guardian Unlimited says

A group of religious zealots and social rightwingers in America are taking on the might of Wikipedia. Based on their belief that Wikipedia’s liberal and secular bias is polluting young American minds, they have set up Conservapedia to put the record straight and promote creationism in “educational, clean and concise” entries.

Fuzzy Zoeller who, according to OUT-LAW.COM from UK law firm Pinsent Masons

is suing an education consultancy over allegedly defamatory Wikipedia postings made from that company’s internet address.

Professors Split on Wiki Debate reports The Harvard Crimson in a follow up to the story that

Earlier this month, Middlebury College’s history department banned the use of Wikipedia as a source for papers and exams after a number of students referenced the same inaccurate Wikipedia article in an exam.

An alternative view from the UK is reported in Education Guardian here.

According to Engadget

… the Linux community has just launched Show Us the Code, a website / movement humoring Steve Ballmer’s repeated claims of burgled Microsoft IP within the open source OS

Network World has the same story here.
This is our post from last November when this was last in the news.

This story has been around for more than a week; the time line in the dozens of posts can be seen in an early upbeat piece from PC World, a rather more measured piece from Information Week, a much cooler assessment from ZDNet UK and, today, a recapitulation of the story so far in The Observer.
This slightly sour piece from TECH.BLORGE.com reviews the role of Dell’s Ideastorm site from where the story started.

The Daily Record has this piece

It has emerged that Cuba and Venezuela want to break ties with the capitalist machine that is Microsoft.
Both governments are trying to wean state agencies from Microsoft’s Windows to the open source Linux operating system.
Linux is developed by a global community who share their code, and is as politically right-on as it gets.
China, Brazil and Norway have also encouraged the development of Linux for a variety of reasons: Microsoft’s near-monopoly, the high cost of proprietary software and security problems.

A more traditional, but also much less pithy, account of the same news comes from Associated Press (via Yahoo Finance).

… is a question we passed on a couple of weeks ago. The answer, at least for some, is “Yes” so the Open Solutions Alliance went public last week aiming to

help customers put open source solutions to work by enabling application integration, certifying quality solutions, and promoting cooperation among open source developers.

so it is entirely different from all those other organisations which hinder customers putting open source solutions to work by obstructing application integration, certifying crap solutions, and promoting disharmony among open source developers.

Thanks to the Reg for the link.