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 […]
In a strongly-worded press release
The UK’s Open Source trade association has criticised the BBC’s plans to limit access to their on-demand television services to Microsoft Windows. The Open Source Consortium (OSC) believes the plans are anti-competitive and will use public money to lock viewers into the technologies of a repeatedly convicted monopolist.
Here is the back […]
According to a piece in Desktop Linux
Adobe Systems Inc. on Jan. 29 announced that it has released the full PDF (Portable Document Format) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Association for Information and Image Management. AIIM, in turn, will start working on making PDF an ISO standard.
There are a couple of dozen posts on this story […]
Should we be relieved or alarmed by the news, in a press release here and a pieces in Info World and others, that
The Web site, openLiberty.org, will have tools and open-source libraries that developers need for applications using federation and Web services standards endorsed by the Liberty Alliance and its openLiberty Project.
The project will […]
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 […]
… with a report on Sourcewire of a
a challenge to the government’s schools ICT quango to turn their promotion of Open Source software into action. Despite overwhelming evidence that Open Source software saves schools money and enhances learning, the Open Source Consortium states that Becta is taking no practical steps to help schools to […]
Things have moved on since our previous post. BECTA published it’s Learning Platform Services Framework on 22 December. Today (8 January) The Register carries a report of a formal complaint to the European Union that BECTA’s procurement process was not properly carried out. No doubt this will be a topic of conversation […]
Financial matters are not our usual fare but Red Hat’s third quarter results give some indication of the impact on open source of the turmoil of the last few months - Oracle possibly threating Red Hat, Novell apparently teaming up with Microsoft, … .
Red Hat’s own announcement is here, an up-beat analysis from the Times […]
This is a big story - 126 posts at the time of writing according to Google News - reported fairly dispassionately here.
Microsoft’s own press release is here and that from the hither-to deeply obscure ECMA is here.
Despite the hype, Open XML is not yet achieved the holy grail, becoming an ISO Standard, […]
Somebody in this company has been reading “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There”:
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’
Of UK interest is a claim in this story of penetration of the UK government market by […]
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 […]
Last time it was the EU dishing out money; this time it is the NSF.
… here and here and here.
BECTA’s response is here and a follow up to this response is here.
This story is only in the technical press so far; we are watching for a breakthrough into the main-stream press next week.
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.
Coverage of the Microsoft-Novell deal has moved on from the stunned headlines which greeted the breaking news to more worldly analysis. The hundreds of stories have two major themes: money, and the future of Red Hat. Comment suggesting wholesome motives like innovation and customer service, or attention to the EU’s concerns is […]
… 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 […]
A consortium consisting of leading European Open Source projects, consultants and research bodies has secured EU funding to measure the quality of Open Source software.
Software Quality Observatory for Open Source Software (SQO-OSS) has raised €3.2 million to build tools that will enable software companies and Open Source projects to benchmark the quality of their application’s […]
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 report on the use of OSS in the higher education sector has come up with a familiar story - open source software is now being regularly considered by a clear majority of UK universities, but widespread enthusiasm for OSS has yet to be matched by clear leadership from the upper echelons at many instituitions.
OSS […]