According to a letter seen by heise online, the German Federal Office of Justice last week launched summary proceedings against The SCO Group GmbH for "breaching regulations pertaining to the publication of its accounts." The proceedings were suspended after the imposed fine was paid. No information on the size of the fine is available.

SCO was taken to court again in Germany, by one of the companies that got an injunction years ago, Heise is reporting, and now it must pay a fine to the company, Thinking Objects Software GmbH. Three companies took SCO Germany to court back then, and this is one of the three. I'll show you a computer translation first of the headline in Heise.

Survey finds only 2 of 87 departments are conforming to federal open document regulations. Research published this week suggests that the majority of federal government departments in Germany are ignoring requirements to implement Open Standards.

Short note: Germany's new IT-Council announced today that they will introduce ODF in the federal public administration. All federal public administrations should be able to receive, sent, read, and modify ODF documents until beginning of 2010.

Competition authorities in Germany and the United States today highlighted the fundamental role that Free Software plays for competition in the software market.

"At the first international workshop of users of the Open Document Format (ODF) in Berlin to which the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic had invited about 150 users and political observers, Brazil and India, in addition to German cities such as Munich, emerged as leading proponents of open standards in the office area.

Because of the German federal elections in 2009, FSFE called on all German Free Software supporters to ask the parties’ candidates about their positions on Free Software and Open Standards. FSFE set up a page about the German Bundestagswahl to help asking questions, and to collecting answers.

The good news is that the Federal Communications Commission has the power to issue regulations that protect net neutrality. The bad news is that draft regulations written by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski don't do that at all. They're worse than nothing.

Berlin 28. April 2010. Georg Greve, founding president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, has received the Cross of Merit on ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany (Verdienstkreuz am Bande). Georg received this high award from the German President for his work on Free Software and Open Standards.