"The city of Madera, Calif., has spent the last year successfully running an open-source-based network as a replacement for one based on Cisco Systems Inc. gear."

Who remembers Red Flag Linux?

"For average hackers in their cubicles, the relation between environmental and free software issues may seem remote but the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) is working to connect the dots.

The headline is a bit of a joke, but the news is serious: Novell just announced Europe's largest rollout of Linux desktops with the Italian Parliament. Approximately 3,500 PCs will be migrated to Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop, including those belonging to the 630 members of parliament. Not too shabby.

"The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance), the leading organization advocating for openness and accessibility to government documents and information, today congratulated Japan for adopting a policy under which government ministries and agencies will solicit bids from software vendors whose products support internationally recognized open standards."

The Federal Communications Commission is working out the rules for what could be the most important radio spectrum auction for years to come. At stake is the right to use spectrum in the coveted 700 MHz bands, which are characterized by the ability to travel long distances and go through the walls of buildings.

"Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs, responsible for National Computerization project is currently working on National Interoperability Framework."

By effectively siding with what is known in cryptography circles as "security through obscurity," the controversial idea that keeping security methods secret makes them more impenetrable, the FCC has drawn an outcry from the software radio set and raised eyebrows among some security experts.