Portugal's parliament adopted a law last Wednesday requiring the country's public administrations to use open standards, including for their electronic documents. Portugal's government organisations will now be required to implement open standards in all digital documents that they publish, exchange, and archive.

According to a press release issued today by the Portuguese Open Source Business Association, the government of Portugal has decided to approve the OpenDocument Format as the single editable, XML-based document format for use by government, and in public procurement.

As part of a plan to increase the digital literacy in Venezuela by distributing computers to schools, Venezuela made an agreement with Portugal to buy one million Classmate laptops. The agreement includes the creation of a factory in Venezuela to build the computers.

Readers from Portugal warn that Microsoft may trying to intercept Free(dom) software in Portuguese authorities.

Microsoft seems eerily close to some of the highest decision-makers in Portugal, and it shows.

Criminal investigation in Portugal to involve a company behind OOXML stuffing and Windows laptops scheme

The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance) is an organization of governments, academic institutions, associations and industry dedicated to educating policy makers, IT administrators and the public on the benefits and opportunities of ODF. Launched in March 2006, the ODF Alliance now has over 480 member organizations in 53 countries.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Saturday ordered 1 million low-cost laptops from Portugal — one of several bilateral deals that Portuguese officials valued at more than US$3 billion.

The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world's premier Linux certification organization, announced that its affiliate organization LPI-Portugal has signed an agreement with UMIC, the Knowledge Society Agency of Portugal's Ministry of Science, Technology and Education to promote training and certification of professional skills in the use of Linux, open source technologies and free software in