LOCAL IT developers are being stifled by the dominance of US software companies that hold on to government business through "vendor lock-in", industry observers say.
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Sweden Rejects Sarkozy’s War on File Sharing
“Calls on the Commission and the Member States to recognise that the Internet is a vast platform for cultural expression, access to knowledge, and democratic participation in European creativity, bringing generations together through the information society; calls on the Commission and the Member States, therefore, to avoid adopting measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and
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Brazil migrates 430,000 voting machines to Linux
The brazilian Election Supreme Court officialy announced at April 4th 2008, that the 2008 elections at Brazil will use GNU / Linux electronic voting machines with software digital authentication.
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EU pumps €10m into open source privacy management
The European Union is contributing 10 million euro (around £8 million) in sponsorship to a project called PrimeLife, which aims to develop open source tools for personal privacy management and protection, and get the community at large to adopt them.
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Steve Ballmer was in India?
... Apparently, he was the last person to get into the flight and the first to deplane. Interestingly, that was the day when BIS met to discuss OOXML. For those who have been following this issue, India's final vote on the subject will be on 20th May 2008. Talk about timing!
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India's Final Vote On MS Office File Standard Is 'NO'
Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), has made a final decision on the document file format OXML (Open eXtended Markup Language). Out of 19 members, five of them did not attend the meeting, one of them abstained, five voted in favor of ooxml, and the rest voted against.
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MAMPU migrates to OpenOffice.org and ODF to increase freedom of choice and interoperability
The Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) has announced that the agency will be migrating to OpenOffice.org office suite as well as adopt the OpenDocument Format (ODF). In addition, Microsoft Office is to be phased out by end of 2008.
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Microsoft ‘tax’ on Linux in schools must end says Becta
Becta has recently shown that it is unafraid of speaking out on behalf of schools. Unhappy with the value for money schools were getting regarding software licencing they first referred Microsoft to the government’s Office of Fair Trading then sent shock waves through schools when it issued its advice not to upgrade to Windows Vista or Office 2007.
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Down with Windows! Russian schools turn to free software
A free online alternative to the Windows operating system is set to be introduced in schools in three Russian regions by 2009. If the pilot project proves successful, all schools across the country will make the switch a year later.
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Kerala's Free Software based IT@SCHOOL project covered by mainstream media
T@SCHOOL project offers exclusively free software based support for primary education in kerala.This time,Director of Public instruction has decided to conduct SSLC(secondary school leaving certificate-the basic requirement for higher studies in INDIA) IT practical examination for this year from 27th February to 7th March 2008. It is first time , conducting IT practical examination for complete students in the free software – IT@School GNU/Linux. IT@School project and Pareekshabhavan has entrusted to conduct the examination for more than 4.7 lakh students throughout the schools of Kerala, Lakshadeep and Gulf countries. IT@school admins are preparing to apply for guiness as they have the largest number of student attending an exam based on exclusive free software based softwares:)
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Open Source for Sovereignty
It's not just European government that's opting for open source. Today the NSA (the super-secret spy agency in the US) have announced they are joining in with OpenSolaris. Barton has an interview that explores this more. I think we'll see more and more government engagement as the adoption-led market takes hold.
Using Free software from open source communities makes perfect sense for governments, and not just for the obvious reasons of up-front savings on license fees.
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UK: Major cost reduction result of Bristol's switch to Open Standards
StarOffice is Sun Microsystems' proprietary suite of office applications, which is based on the Open Source OpenOffice. In 2006 Bristol took the further step of adopting the ISO-approved Open Document Format (ODF).
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Open Source Market: FOSS getting hot in Russia
Recent interest towards FOSS from the Russian government has boosted commercial activity in this field. No longer than a year ago there was no single large company that would say it is capable of doing FOSS system integration projects. Now there are three, and the number will probably grow.
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Navy to focus only on open systems
The Navy will acquire only systems based on open technologies and standards.
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EU: European Commission to increase its use of Open Source
In a document published last week, the EC states among others that the Commission will prefer Open Source software for its new IT projects: "For all new development, where deployment and usage is foreseen by parties outside of the Commission Infrastructure, Open Source Software will be the preferred development and deployment platform."
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