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. […]
An item on the BBC website about its plans for on-demand TV includes some high-level recognition for FLOSS:
The [BBC] Trust also recommends that the BBC adopts a more platform-agnostic approach to the digital rights management framework which protects the programmes offered for download.
The DRM framework currently relies on Microsoft technology but, the Trust says, […]
We had hoped to either
1. maintain a dignified silence, or
2. beat the Inq to a witty nickname
about the panorama belatedly opening up for Windows users, but Antony Gelberg prompts us to post about
… the “feature” where the BBC confuses itself with a web forum, and prints selected comments from members of the public […]
The two leading consortia dedicated to the advancement of Linux(R) — the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group (FSG) — today announced that they have signed an agreement to merge and form The Linux Foundation
says a press release from The Linux Foundation - read the rest here.
According to Goggle, there are […]
The story we reported last week is appearing all round the world, including the BBC, in New Zealand, in the USA courtesy of ZDNet and, not surpringly, Brussels.
… is how one blogger hailed the news of the Microsoft - Novell deal. Read the press release here and find a whole lot more from Novell here. For Microsoft’s PR go here.
This story has prompted literally hundreds of news items on the web (Google says 527 at the time of writing) with […]
Creative Match reports that
The BBC and Microsoft Corp have taken a step toward strengthening their working alliance and exploring digital opportunities for next generation broadcasting
Two of the finest pedigrees of the digital age have come together to explore the new media terrain which companies must now traverse.
Is there a reader in the know […]
A long piece in The Guardian about Joel Klein:The White House lawyer who took on Microsoft is now New York schools chief - helped by Gates’s millions. Despite their adversarial encounters Klein is full of praise for the way Gates behaved when they met again. “It was a perfect storm moment,” he says. “The […]
Educational software manufacurer Blackboard have begun legal action against rival company Desire2Learn based on a software patent which critics in say could stifle innovation and disrupt educational institutions, as well as threaten open source projects with costly legal battles.
The company was awarded the wide-ranging patent, which covers educational groupware and other tools which facilitate web-based […]
Open source software is causing Microsoft serious headaches in the server market, according to a new report from Quocirca. It goes on to suggest that the growing importance of embedded software will pose a more serious, long-term threat to proprietary companies:
The third way proves a big challenge to the commercial software vendors in the long […]
CNN.com’s Business site has an interview with Linus Torvalds in which he talks about the early years of Linux and what he actually does these days:
[Interviewer]: Now let’s go back to the beginnings when Linux first started in the early 1990s. What motivated you to give away the source code?
[Linus]: I didn’t start thinking I […]
Code Breakers, a new BBC series on free and open source software in the developing world, starts tonight on BBC World.
The poorest countries are now beginning to use free or open source software (FOSS), a software that parallels many of Microsoft’s programmes but with the major difference being that they are distributed free of charge […]
Redmond raised eyebrows after it offered - without prompting - access to the source code and documentation for its Windows Server in order to try and fend off the legal (and possibly-soon-to-be penal) assault from the EU over server protocols. Nobody except the media seemed particularly impressed by the move; an unnamed representative of the […]
The Boston Globe splashed this article on the front page of both their print and online editions last week, reporting that Peter Quinn - the man who set Massachusetts towards ODF - is under investigation over trips he took to software conferences, some of which (shock horror) were sponsored by tech companies.
LXer is suitably disgusted, […]
The BBC has a story about some of the organisations on the fringes of the WSIS trumpeting their use of open source software in the developing world. Also in the article are Freedom Toasters - portable machines used to burn and disseminate CDs containing some of the more mature, stable and useful open source apps […]
Sunday’s edition of the BBC’s Click Online programme featured a report on the O’Reilly open source conference in Amsterdam - you can watch the the programme and read the accompanying web article here.
Just what exactly, I wonder, are they trying to imply with the opening paragraphs:
The Dutch are pretty open about the sort of stuff […]
Last night’s Newsnight over on BBC 2 took a look at the Flock browser, the buzzword-tastic Web2.0 version of our mate Firefox. You can watch the article via the link above, read the text article written by the correspondent, or read some of the (fairly negative) feedback the article received.
No sheep puns were made during […]
The UK Linux and Open Source Awards were held last week - the winners can be found here - and the news has now had chance to percolate down into the media. IC Wales congratulates the Swansea-based CGram for scooping the gong for best business award - the website was already behing the company with […]
It’s been a while since we mentioned Firefox, but there’s been a few interesting bits and pieces today.
Mozilla’s Gervase Markham has been given some space in The Times to talk about open source software, freedom and a certain browser.
BBC News has some thoughts on liability in the world of software. Surprisingly, despite recognising that being […]
That article we blogged a couple of days ago caused quite a stir, and Fox News have since been forced to offer an apology for not mentioning that the author was a full–on shill, but not for the fact that such blatant propaganda was allowed on their site. LXer also has a response to the […]