UK Open Source Media Watch

The fabulously named WikiTosh.com - a wiki for all things Macintosh - has been launched; there’s an article on MacWorld announcing it if you want to check that out.

…on Computer World’s Aussie site

IE’s market share goes down and down again, whilst Firefox goes up and up and up.

Meanwhile, Netscape - which still holds the number two spot after IE - has found itself in trouble with its security

BBC News has an article on a firm called Ndiyo who are planning to launch a thin client called Nivo for under £100 per unit. To keep costs down, the company are using open source software, and are aiming the product at schools, cyber cafes and smaller companies which require affordable ICT.

…on the Register. The bank currently uses a version of SCO’s Unix, and deemed a migration to Linux to be easier than moving to Windows.

The Guardian has an in-depth review of the relative merits of Open Office and MS Office, which goes through the various applications within each suite and the relative merits of each version.

The overall conclusion is roughly, MS for beginners, Open for more advanced users.

Brazil has been a long time proponent of OSS, and looks set to take the relationship to the next level with a presidential decree enshrining the preeminence of open source software for use in its public sector.

According to stories on ZDNet and Linux Insider, the Brazilian president’s office is in the final draft […]

A few things you might be interested in.

Ovum thinks Red Hat are in for “good times”
NewsForge tells us about “the UK’s premier Linux event”
Linux IT talks up its LPI certification programme

Three media companies have approached the judge in the SCO vs IBM trial to ask for access to documents that have been submitted to the court. The companies’ attorney, Andrew Stone, says that the documents were filed in secret, but that the court never ruled on whether they should be kept secret. The court, it […]

The New York Times has an interesting article about an intersection between venture capitalists and OSS

Samba developer Jeremy Allison has been employed by Novell, and is expected to be working on file sharing. He will continue to work on Samba - he was previously employed by Hewlett-Packard whilst working on Samba - and has negotiated a clause into his contract to allow him to release all of the work he […]

According to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the number of complaints it recieved about ads published by tech companies fell by about 16% during 2004. However, the tech sector is still second only to the leisure industry in terms of number of complaints.

One of the most complained about was an installment from Microsoft’s […]

Montavista released its latest version of MobiLinux yesterday, which could possibly mean cheaper mobile phones. The story was reported on TechWorld and Grab-a-Geek, and there’s (what looks like) a mostly undigested press release at TechSmec.

…on eGov. The upcoming government report from the agency for ICT in education is expected to find that schools can save “significant amounts” by switching to OSS.

Before you get too excited, have a look at this article on ZDNet, criticising the UK public sector for its slow uptake of OSS “despite … real open source […]

The BBC has relaunched a project to create an open repository of knowledge (sound familiar?), based on the guidebook in Douglas Adams’ fantasy. For more details check out the Reuters story on the subject or you can have a look at the site itself.

… so says a reviewer on The Inquirer

EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson got himself in a spot of bother last week over a cocktail party he attended on Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s yacht. Obviously, given what Microsoft are up to at the EU at the moment, there have been questions over whether this constituted a conflict of interest. The following outlets have […]

The Financial Times has published several articles in the last couple of days relating to the Linux-Windows competition.

Two articles on Longhorn, both mentioning Linux in relation to the future OS:

“Microsoft to gear up for the 64-bit world” - a mere decade behind Linux
“Microsoft beefs up its Longhorn” - an attempt to cut through the marketing […]

So say HTMLFixIt, of all people, who have aimed this j’accuse at the Scandinavian country averring that they are Microsoft’s “Trojan horse” in the EU.

…on Reuters.