The Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science (MEC) has told school boards across the country that it will not be shelling out huge amounts of dosh for Microsoft software this year.
It wants schools to keep their old computers and install free Linux software instead as part of an austerity measure.
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On the White House's official website for petitioning the government, there is a petition to return sanity to the US software industry by overturning software patents.
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A free, open-source Windows "clone" - ReactOS - that has been in development for over a decade has caught the eye of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
A student at a Russian high school the president visited recently gave Mr Medvedev a brief overview of the project - and asked him for 1m euros.
Read more »A group of thirteen Copenhagen hospitals and their almost 25,000 workers will, over the next year, move to using LibreOffice, the community maintained and developed fork of the OpenOffice.org office suite.
Read more »The council of the Italian region of Puglia is about to approve the law proposed last December that will make the use of open source and open standards mandatory for the region's public administrations, according to news reports.
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Glyn Moody now points us to the news that (Russian President) Medvedev appears to be going even further than just condemning today's copyright laws. He's now looking to adjust Russia's copyright laws in the other direction.
Read more »EC migrates to windows 7, contracts made without public call for tender. Explanations confirm lock-in as motivation which is in contradiction with European procurement Directive. A black day for Europe.
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Nach den Befragungen in anderen Bundesländern, veröffentlichte heute die Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) die Ergebnisse ihrer Parteienumfrage zu Freier Software für die Bürgerschaftswahl in Bremen.
Read more »Members of the European Parliament and their assistants are participating in this year's Document Freedom Day, a 'grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of Free Document Formats and Open Standards in general', according to an announcement on the organisation's website.
Read more »Microsoft web software is like a computer virus in government computer systems and must be banned, a meeting of the British Computer Society's Open Source Specialist Group heard last week. Called by Home Office lead architect Tariq Rashid, the meeting formed part of an investigation into why government open source policy has floundered.
Read more »When it comes to Free Software and Open Standards, the UK has long lagged way behind other countries. There were a few policies that sounded good on paper, but that’s exactly where they stayed. This may be finally changing. The UK Cabinet Office has issued a "procurement policy notice" (.pdf) that is, well, surprising. In a good way.
Read more »Free Software Foundation Europe is asking the Members of the European Parliament to wait for legal advice before voting on a unitary patent for Europe. While a proposal is on the Parliament's agenda for the coming week, a legal opinion by the European Court of Justice is expected later this month.
Read more »One member of the European Parliament and a handful of their advisors and assistants started a free software group last Saturday, aiming to increase the use of free and open source software in the European Parliament's IT infrastructure. The user group is open to all who works in the European Parliament, including staff and assistants working in political groups.
Read more »Slim Amamou is one of the main figures of the Tunisian Open Source community, first arrested for his activism against the Tunisian regime during the last revolution, later appointed as Minister of Youth after the Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s fall. Issa Mahasneh asks in this blog post: "Should the Arab World need revolutions to have Open-Source-friendly ministers?".
Read more »Former open source evangelist at Sun, reported on his blog, on a presentation he had given at a conference in Latvia concerning the ODF. Speaking before him, a Latvian government official had made the announcement that, from now on, all government departments in Latvia must accept documents in ODF.
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