Access to already-leaked documents is denied, despite clear rules that make it an obligation

The idea of thinking up a hypothetical situation and then asking a group of qualified panellists to visualise how each would react to it is nothing new.

There's plenty of money to be made in Open Source software — something that, despite recent events, Novell, Red Hat, and a laundry-list of other OSS-loving firms can attest to. Where there often isn't much money, however, is in the hands of individual developers who donate their time to hack Open Source apps into enterprise-class offerings.

We have reported extensively about the Venezuelan government’s support of open formats in the area of information technology. But it was only recently that the National Center of IT (CNTI) made it mandatory for the public sector to use open formats (ODT, ODS, ODP, ODG).

The Brazilian free software movement is in such high gear that it is almost impossible to keep up on all the new developments and projects that are happening throughout the country. Brazil is larger in size than the continental United States and has a population of almost 200 million people.

Governments continue to march toward open source. The Dutch government last year committed to use open standards, the French government has deployed Kubuntu desktops to over 1,000 members of parliament and staff, and a few days ago the United Kingdom government announced an Open Source action plan.

In Brazil, the adoption of free software in the public sector continues its unparalleled expansion. In the state of Paraná, the IT institution that maintains all of the state’s computer systems (CELEPAR), has developed a free software Ombudsman: OUV.

UK s government is starting to consider open source to avoid avoid being "locked into proprietary software" with an action plan.