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. […]
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.
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 […]
Readers who are citizens of the European Union may want to follow up this item on Slashdot:
The Council of the EU has a streaming service so that we can watch its meetings — but the service can only be accessed by Mac or MS Windows users. This is because they employ WMV format for the […]
A month or so ago we mentioned an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons. A vigorous campaign by the UK FLOSS community and the increasing number of signatories (97 at the time of writing) keeps it in the news (here and here).
We post from England and Wales so need to be circumspect in our comments about goings-on in Scotland. However, this annoying piece caught our eye; looking further into it only increased the annoyance:
The Government Leaders’ Forum Europe is one of Microsoft’s flagship events for government, parliamentarians, education and business leaders across the continent and […]
So says Victor Keegan in this piece in today’s Technology Guardian extolling the virtues of the Open Rights Group, PledgeBank, writetothem.com, http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/, and the all-round general good guys at MySociety.
A timely example of this impact comes in the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property which
recommends introducing a strictly limited ‘private copying’ exception to enable […]
… in a leader setting out the arguments for FLOSS in schools, about which we have posted several times in the past few days, with politics:
Yet Becta, the government agency that sets education IT policy, … works according to the framework principle, which in best civil service tradition sets out approved suppliers who are easy […]
This is the title of the Early Day Motion which John Pugh MP has tabled in the House of Commons. Media reaction is moving up the food chain.
In case you have not seen it, this message is in circulation within the UK FLOSS community:
Dear FLOSS supporter
John Pugh MP has tabled an Early Day Motion […]
UK Members of Parliament have identified Department of Education and Skills (DfES) and Becta policies as favouring proprietary software vendors thereby blocking the adoption of Open Source software by schools and colleges. An Early Day Motion tabled by Liberal Democrat MP John Pugh, has called for a fair approach to ICT procurement in the education […]
Speaking to an audience at St Bride’s Church in central London, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne gave the annual Olsen Memorial Lecture entitled ‘Politics and the Media in the Internet Age’.
To quote from his speech
Linux is the open-source operating system that is the main rival to Microsoft Windows.
Here is John Naughton’s slightly grudging assessment.
The Belgian government has decided to adopt the Open Document Format throughout its operations. The government will require that all departments can read ODF documents by September 2007, with a view to moving to full adoption a year later if all runs smoothly.
Peter Strickx, general manager for architecture and standards of Fedict, the organization that […]
The case for digital rights, encompassing such issues as web privacy and freedom of speech, was laid out this week by Becky Hogge in The New Statesman, who argues that, in order for them to be given the attention they deserve, we need to “make them sexy”:
The truth is, it’s the politics that keeps digital-rights […]
From Heise.de:
The administration of the Berlin Senate (the governement of the German federal state Berlin) has voiced its opposition to a complete migration of the authority’s computers to Linux. It thus opposes the Berlin Parliament, which called for a two-phase migration of servers and workstations to Open Sources systems. The report presented to heise online […]
The European Commission has performed an apparent volte-face on the subject of software patents. In a response to a question put by Polish MEP Adam Gierek, the EC said that…
“The draft Community Patent regulation (Wikipedia article) confirms in its Article 28.1(a) that patents granted for a subject matter (such as computer programs), which is excluded […]
The European Parliament voted against a proposal to allow companies to defend patents granted by member state throughout the EU. Campaigners against the proposal included the Foundation for Free Information Infrastructure and Florian Mueller of NoSoftwarePatents.com.
Martin Brampton, over at Silicon.com, has called on the UK government to embrace more enthusiastically not only the fruits of the open source community, but also the ideas driving it.
UN inspector Dominique Ouédraogo has revealed in a speech that the United Nations has chosen to recommend its members utilise open source software, especially in the areas of health, education and internatioanl commerce, according to TMCNet. Two reports by the organisation, upon which the advice was based, concluded that OSS was the “most appropriate vehicle […]
…from Microsoft. Their legislature has passed a resolution asking for the federal government to reduce it’s reliance on Redmond products, which have a virtual monopoly in government offices.
This is from a ten-day-old (oops) press release from the FSF France:
SNEP and SCPP have told Free Software authors: “You will be required to change your licenses.” SACEM add: “You shall stop publishing free software,” and warn they are ready “to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code” should the “VU/SACEM/BSA/FA […]