Summit 2009
OFE Press Release - Government Action Plan for Open Source, Open Standards and Software Re-Use - Updated
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2010-01-27
OpenForum Europe welcomes this
updated Government Action Plan for Open Source, Open Standards and
Software Re-Use, part of the overall Government ICT Strategy (January
2010) This is an essential next step in the implementation of
Government Policy in this vital area. This Action Plan now requires
suppliers to show they have considered Open Source and implements new
accounting requirements to highlight the future costs of lock in.
Graham Taylor, CEO, OpenForum Europe says: “ We welcome the important clarifications that have been made to this Action Plan. OpenForum Europe will seek to support Government in achieving the objectives set out.
Affirmative action in the form of an effective implementation schedule of the Action Plan will be essential to give credibility to the overall Government programme in this area.
The early provision of a shareable desktop computer environment service based on Open Source Platforms will be a vital test of the Government's willingness to implement a comprehensive Open Source policy.
OFE remains cautious about the manner in which common standards have been described in the Government ICT Strategy which could perpetuate lock-in to proprietary solutions. We remain committed on believing that truly Open Standards are an essential pre-requisite to the delivery of Interoperability and Software Re-Use that the Government is seeking”
Open Forum Europe is a not-for-profit, independent organisation launched in March 2002 to accelerate, broaden and strengthen the use of open source software in business and government. OFE is supported by major IT suppliers and works closely with the European Commission and national governments.
www.openforumeurope.org Contact; Graham Taylor 01372 815 168
Reference:http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/cio/ict.aspx
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Graham Taylor, CEO, OpenForum Europe says: “ We welcome the important clarifications that have been made to this Action Plan. OpenForum Europe will seek to support Government in achieving the objectives set out.
Affirmative action in the form of an effective implementation schedule of the Action Plan will be essential to give credibility to the overall Government programme in this area.
The early provision of a shareable desktop computer environment service based on Open Source Platforms will be a vital test of the Government's willingness to implement a comprehensive Open Source policy.
OFE remains cautious about the manner in which common standards have been described in the Government ICT Strategy which could perpetuate lock-in to proprietary solutions. We remain committed on believing that truly Open Standards are an essential pre-requisite to the delivery of Interoperability and Software Re-Use that the Government is seeking”
Open Forum Europe is a not-for-profit, independent organisation launched in March 2002 to accelerate, broaden and strengthen the use of open source software in business and government. OFE is supported by major IT suppliers and works closely with the European Commission and national governments.
www.openforumeurope.org Contact; Graham Taylor 01372 815 168
Reference:http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/cio/ict.aspx
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OFE WORLD NEWS ROUND UP
Canonical scoops Alfresco man for operations
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2010-02-08
The Register - Open-source evangelist and überblogger Matt Asay has been named as
chief operating officer of Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial sponsor. Asay will align strategic goals and operational activities, optimize
day-to-day operations, and lead Canonical's marketing and back-office
functions, Canonical said Friday. He joins Canonical from open-source enterprise content-management
specialist Alfresco, where he'd worked since 1998, most recently as
vice president of business development.
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IBM releases Lotus Symphony 3 beta
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2010-02-05
ZDNet - IBM on Thursday rolled out the beta of Lotus Symphony 3.0,
its free office productivity suite built on the OpenOffice.org code
base.
The company launched Lotus Symphony as
a free alternative in 2007. From that beta, IBM took Symphony to a
general release in 2008. Jeannette Barlow, Symphony's product manager,
called the latest release of IBM's free office suite "the most
significant investment and enhancement from that original delivery".
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5 government sites using Drupal effectively for open government initiatives
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2010-02-05
govfresh - By now, most people in the Gov 2.0 community have heard of Drupal, the popular open source social publishing system powering close to 500,000 websites ranging from big government to Britney Spears.
Drupal has seen steady growth from its inception as a Belgian grad
student’s experiment in 2001 to one of the most heavily used open
source content management systems in the world, downloaded by a quarter
million people per month. A growing trend the Drupal community is
following closely this year is government interest in the platform to
further open government initiatives and broaden adoption across
government.
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Of governments and geeks
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2010-02-05
The Economist - In several countries more official data are being issued in raw
form so that anybody can use them. This forces bureaucrats and creative
types to interact in new ways
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Symbian phone operating system goes open source
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2010-02-04
BBC - The group behind the world's most popular
smartphone operating system - Symbian - is giving away "billions of
dollars" worth of code for free.
The Symbian Foundation's announced that it would make its code open source in 2008 and has now completed the move.
It means that any organisation or individual can now use and modify the platform's underlying source code "for any purpose".
Symbian has shipped in more than 330m mobile phones, the foundation says.
It believes the move will attract new developers to work on the system and help speed up the pace of improvements.
"This is the largest open source migration effort ever," Lee Williams of the Symbian Foundation told BBC News.
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Already a pacesetter, Amazon drops cloud pricing
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2010-02-04
CNet - With Microsoft finally releasing the Windows Azure cloud operating system to the public earlier this week, Amazon Web Services (AWS) took just one day to offer new pricing reductions to re-establish the market price for cloud services.
Effective February 1, AWS is reducing prices by 2 cents per gigabyte
based on the tiers of usage offer. Amazon also lowered rates for data
transferred out of its Amazon CloudFront content delivery network,
cutting rates by 2 cents per gigabyte. And while 2 cents may not sound
like much, at the highest usage levels of 1,000 terabytes, that takes
the cost down by 40 percent per gigabyte.
The cloud game is by no means over. And while Amazon certainly has a
huge lead over the rest of the pack--including large enterprise players
like HP and Dell--what AWS continues to do is set the pricing and
consumption models that others will be forced to follow if they want to
compete.
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Which open-source vendors can afford the cloud?
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2010-02-03
CNet - Matt Asay - Cost and quality are two driving factors for open source's role as the
bedrock for public cloud computing. Google, Amazon, and other public
cloud providers simply can't compete with expensive, proprietary
license-burdened infrastructure. They need open source. As cloud computing matures and moves from public to private clouds,
however, we may see enterprises flock to free (as in cost) and open (as
in freedom) infrastructure, too. What would this mean for subscription-based open-source vendors?
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G-Cloud-hosted app store trial launches this week
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2010-02-03
Silicon.com - An apps store that could help the government slash the cost of its IT infrastructure is to be trialled from this week.
Prototype versions of the Government Application Store - a central
store of software applications that can be accessed by public sector
organisations over the internet - will be available to a selection of
public sector bodies.
The pilot was announced by Martin Bellamy, director of the office of the government CIO, and the civil servant in charge of the G-Cloud project, announced at the GovNet Government IT 2010 event in London last week.
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Danes ditch Microsoft, take ODF road - at last
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2010-02-02
The Register - The Danish Parliament has agreed to ditch some Microsoft-based software in favour of the ODF standard from April next year. According to version2.dk and courtesy of
politken.dk, parliamentary parties decided - after four years of
deliberation - to use the Open Document Format in all Danish state
office documents.
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Could open source abandon the Google train?
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2010-02-01
CNet - As arguably
the world's largest open-source company, Google has a big stake in
maintaining its place at the heart of the open-source ecosystem. Recent
events, however, suggest that Google can't rest on its laurels if it
wants to secure the hearts and minds of open-source developers. Make no mistake: Google needs those developers.
Android, Chrome (and Chrome OS), and other Google initiatives depend
upon fostering vibrant open-source communities that can help it to
surpass Microsoft and Apple.Such communities may be ready to cut the Google umbilical cord, however, which should be worrying to Google.
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Privacy: the challenges ahead for the European Union
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2010-02-01
Oracle Outlines Integration With Sun
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2010-02-01
datacenterknowledge - Competing for the spotlight with Apple’s iPad announcement, Oracle
(ORCL) outlined integration strategies for its $7.4 billion acquisition
of Sun Microsystems, which was completed yesterday. The company’s
presentations focused on delivering “complete, engineered, and
integrated systems,” with an emphasis on the new Oracle stack that
spans applications, middleware, database and hardware.During the long wait for approval from the European Union many
speculated on exactly how, or if Oracle would integrate mySQL, Java or
Open Office. Here’s a look at some areas where we learned more:
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NEWS FROM THE OPEN SOURCE OBSERVATORY
Two thousand open source applications for the public sector — published on Feb 03, 2010
ES: Administrations sponsor extension of open source network monitoring tool — published on Feb 01, 2010
DE: Rural district uses open source to manage IT at schools — published on Jan 31, 2010
UK: Government tightens procurement demands in open source policy — published on Jan 31, 2010
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