"MONTREAL, Aug. 27 /CNW Telbec/ - FACIL, a non-profit association, which promotes the collective appropriation of Free Software, contests the Quebec government purchasing methods for software used within public administrations.

"As 2008 began, the international music industry was proudly predicting the dawning of a new age of co-operation between rightsholders, Internet companies and governments.

"Xulfr team is a privileged observer of the use of the Mozilla platform in France. Most of us work professionally with Mozilla technologies. I thought it might be a good idea to write a little report about what has happened in France over the last few years as far as XUL is concerned..."

More and more open-source developers these days are employees of companies, paid to work on open-source projects, rather than independent programmers doing it for fun. The change raises issues for projects, programmers and employers alike.

More and more open-source developers these days are employees of companies, paid to work on open-source projects, rather than independent programmers doing it for fun. The change raises issues for projects, programmers and employers alike.

ere's the scoop from Les Echos.fr on France's sudden change from its No vote to Abstain. Microsoft France's President Eric Boustouller sent AFNOR a letter [PDF] in French, of course. He tells a tale about OOXML and ODF progressing side by side and how if OOXML is approved, a group will be working hard to make the two more interoperable. Attached was a an HP statement of support for OOXML.

If you are a scientist and KDE user, you may already have been impressed by the range and quality of specialist software available for your use. But you may not be aware of the scientific graph plotting applications LabPlot (stable KDE 3 release with a KDE 4 version in progress) and SciDAVis (Qt4).

A new research report from AMI Partners reveals some promising trends in the business intelligence market. As BI sales heat up in certain regions, The VAR Guy wonders who will benefit most: Traditional BI software companies, open source alternatives or software as a service (SaaS) options? Here’s The VAR Guy’s best guess.

The department at the French Ministry of Education that is handling purchasing of software and software licenses is increasing its Open Source offerings to some 1.5 million teachers and education workers in 250 institutes France.