Summit 2009
OFE WORLD NEWS ROUND UP
Sun's head of open source leaves the company
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2010-03-11
ITPRO - Oracle has lost its third high-profile executive since it merged with Sun Microsystems in a $7.4 billion deal at the beginning of the year. Simon Phipps, previously chief open source officer, announced his departure on his blog earlier this week.
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Google Targets Microsoft With DocVerse Deal
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2010-03-11
WSJ - Stepping up its fight against Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. acquired DocVerse, a technology startup that allows people to edit Microsoft Office files online.
Google paid around $25 million for the San Francisco-based company, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In an interview, Jonathan Rochelle, group product manager for Google
Apps, said Google acquired DocVerse to make it easier for people to
transition from desktop software to online software. The latter is an
area where Google is trying to get a leg up over Microsoft, with its
Google Apps service, which includes online word-processing and
spreadsheet software. He declined to comment on the deal's price.
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London Government Accused Of Open Source Inaction
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2010-03-10
eWeek - A Green Party representative has accused the London government of
failing to fully exploit open source software, but activists say the
Greater London Authority (GLA) is doing well… at least compared to
central government. Despite a central government commitment to use open source, London’s
local government has too many plans “in the pipeline” and not enough
actually delivered, said Darren Johnson, a Green Party member of the
GLA: “It is clear that nothing is likely to happen without some major
push towards progress”.
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CeBIT 2010: Recipe for Office Migration
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2010-03-10
Linux Magazine - In the Open Source Forum at CeBIT, Florian Schiessl of the Munich city
council shared his experiences about their migration to OpenOffice. The city council of the Bavarian
capital has more than 15,000 PC workstations in 51 locations across the
city that were converted end of 2009 to OpenOffice. The migration was
based on a decision the city council made in 2003 to make the desktops
independent of particular software vendors by using Linux and open
source.
Read More
Microsoft changes EU browser ballot shuffling
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2010-03-09
Computerworld - Responding to reports last week that its European ballot screen was not
truly randomizing the positions of the top five browsers, Microsoft
today said it has changed the algorithm that shuffles the spots.
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SCO vs. Linux: The trial can begin
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2010-03-09
The H Open - The SCO Group is to receive 2 million dollars from a group of investors headed by majority shareholder Ralph Yarro. Following an oral hearing,
the Delaware bankruptcy court dealing with SCO has approved the loan.
This means that the company now has sufficient funds for the pending
jury trial against Novell. The trial, which is to address rights to
Unix and the legality of protective licences for Linux users, is set to
start today and is expected to last three weeks.
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Mozilla lays foundation for web's next 100 years
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2010-03-08
The Register - The Mozilla Foundation is best known for Firefox, but as its head Mitchell Baker recently told us, the group's mission is not merely to produce a browser that kills Internet Explorer.
"The mission is to build certain qualities into the human experience
of the internet. We are in a reasonable spot with the browser, and
Firefox is important for the immediate future. But we've barely started
in user control," Baker said.
What exactly was Baker talking about?
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Doing the Microsoft Shuffle: Algorithm Fail in Browser Ballot
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2010-03-05
Rob Weir - An Antic Disposition - The story first hit in last week on the Slovakian tech site DSL.sk.
Since I am not linguistically equipped to follow the Slovakian tech
scene, I didn’t hear about the story until it was brought up in English
on TechCrunch. The gist of these reports is this: DSL.sk did a test of the “ballot” screen at www.browserchoice.eu,
used in Microsoft Windows 7 to prompt the user to install a browser.
It was a Microsoft concession to the EU, to provide a randomized ballot
screen for users to select a browser. However, the DSL.sk test
suggested that the ordering of the browsers was far from random.
Read More
Red Hat backs cloud research at Newcastle
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2010-03-05
ZDNet - Red Hat is funding a new research centre at Newcastle
University that is looking into areas such as grid and cloud computing,
virtualisation and middleware.
The centre,
which is based at the university's School of Computing Science, will
initially employ two researchers to carry out collaborative research,
the company announced on Wednesday. Red Hat said it plans to expand the
team within the next few years and will also fund PhD scholarships, MSc
placements and undergraduate projects.
"Newcastle
University, with its tradition of producing top-flight researchers and
excellent work in areas of immediate relevance to Red Hat, such as
fault tolerance, security and cloud computing, presented a clear choice
for partnering to establish the centre," said Mark Little, chief
technologist of middleware at Red Hat, in a statement.
Read More
Document Freedom Day
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2010-03-04
Document Freedom Day - Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global day for document liberation. It
will be a day of grassroots effort to educate the public about the
importance of Open Document Formats and Open Standards in general.
“Open Standards lie at the heart of the Internet and much of what has emerged to function on this global and growing platform. The essence of open standards is interoperability. Adoption of open standards leads to the interworking of competitive products. By any metric, open standards lower barriers to entry into existing markets and increase consumer choice.” — Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist, Google Read More
“Open Standards lie at the heart of the Internet and much of what has emerged to function on this global and growing platform. The essence of open standards is interoperability. Adoption of open standards leads to the interworking of competitive products. By any metric, open standards lower barriers to entry into existing markets and increase consumer choice.” — Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist, Google Read More
Vermont Adopts Open Source Software Policy
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2010-03-04
Government Technology - Vermont has become the latest government to enact an open source
software policy, after Secretary of Administration Neale F. Lunderville
recently signed a policy developed under state CIO David Tucker's leadership.
The policy says the Vermont Department of Information and Innovation
and other departments should look at open source solutions as part of
the procurement process, and are directed to calculate the total cost
of ownership for an open source system, including "fixed costs (direct
purchases and licensing) and operational costs for support, testing,
upgrades, maintenance and training," as part of the procurement process.
Read More
Microsoft's EU ballot fails to randomize browser order
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2010-03-03
Computerworld -
Microsoft's new browser ballot screen, which is supposed to randomly
scramble the positions of the top five browsers, instead gives Google's
Chrome the best chance of landing in the preferred first spot, an IBM
software architect said today.
"This
was a rookie mistake," said Rob Weir, who works for IBM and has a
degree in astrophysics from Harvard University. "I was definitely
Weir,
whose title at IBM is ODF Architect, has been a prolific commentator on
issues related to the Open Document Format, which IBM supports.
Although IBM and Microsoft have butted heads over formats
-- Microsoft has pushed its Open XML format as a substitute for ODF --
Weir stopped short of accusing Microsoft of deliberately coding the bug.
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Oracle buys into Sun's 'Project Copy Linux' dream
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2010-03-03
The Register - A former Sun Microsystems' executive has re-assured worried
OpenSolaris users the open-source operating system has a future under
new owner Oracle.
Dan Roberts, Oracle director of product management, has said the
database giant will continue to invest in OpenSolaris and will deliver
the operating system's next incarnation: OpenSolaris 2010.03.
"Oracle will continue to make OpenSolaris available as open source,
and Oracle will continue to actively support and participate in the
community," Roberts told the annual OpenSolaris meeting Friday on IRC.
Read More
Open-source evolution hits overdrive
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2010-03-02
CNet - Open-source software has hastened the evolution of Web applications as
it drives out the inefficiencies and costs of proprietary software to
enable companies like Google and Twitter to scale. But it's not just
proprietary software that is feeling the squeeze: Companies like Facebook are now swapping out old-guard open-source projects like MySQL for new-school open source.
Can open source hope to compete with itself?
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Microsoft urges antitrust complaints about Google
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2010-03-02
Times Online - Microsoft has encouraged other companies to complain about Google to antitrust
regulators in its most outspoken attack on its rival.
The software group, which for years has been the prime target of competition
regulators in the US and Europe over the way it handled its near-monopoly of
computer operating systems, wants to turn the spotlight on to Google's
position as the world's biggest internet search and advertising company.
Microsoft called Google's actions potentially anti-competitive in a blog post
by Dave Heiner, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, on the company's
website.
Read More
Another Day, Another Illogical Attack On Open Source
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2010-03-01
Ostatic - In yet another attack on open source software usage around the world, a
copyright-focused organization is claiming that use of open source
software promotes piracy. With a new 498-page report
(PDF) that repeatedly defies logic, the International Intellectual
Property Alliance (IIPA) argues that the office of the U.S. Trade
Representative should "carefully monitor" government mandates to adopt open source, and place numerous countries on watchlists.
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Government departments allowed to use Firefox
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2010-03-01
ZDNet - The government has said its departments are free to consider
any browser, and should consider open-source software including Firefox.
According
to a parliamentary written answer from Cabinet Office minister Angela
Smith, there is no rule that says government departments must use
Microsoft's Internet Explorer, even though it is the browser most
widely used within Whitehall.
When asked by Francis
Maude MP what the government's policy on the installation of different
web browsers is, Smith said: "Government policy regarding installation
and use of web browsers is that all decisions must be in line with
value-for-money requirements.
Read More
NEWS FROM THE OPEN SOURCE OBSERVATORY
DE: 'Vendor independence a non-issue in consolidation of government IT' — published on Feb 26, 2010
Spanish government's adds software development site to OSOR's list — published on Feb 25, 2010
NL: Vendor lock-in frustrating open open source desktop projects — published on Feb 25, 2010
Encoding tool to speed-up workflow of aid organisations — published on Feb 23, 2010
RECENT OFE PRESS RELEASES
OFE Press Release - Government Action Plan for Open Source, Open Standards and Software Re-Use - Updated Released 27-01-2010
OFE Press Release - The EC Settlement Sends an Unambiguous Message to the Market – Lock-In is Dead Released 16-12-2009
OFE Press Release - Statement by OFE in Response to Ministerial Declaration on eGovernment Malmo Released 19-11-2009
OFE Press Release - EU Presidency 1, European Commission 0 Released 09-11-2009
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