City officials in Helsinki, Finland, are overwhelmingly satisfied after trying out the Free Software office suite OpenOffice.org on their laptops. 75% of 600 officials have been using OpenOffice.org exclusively since February, as part of a pilot project where the city installed the program on 22,500 workstations.

While Microsoft and friends are doing their best to hide Linux and open-source software from the public, businesses have been adopting Linux and open-source faster than ever.

Some of the best open source software (OSS) around is multiple platform. You can run the exact same software with the same look and feel (I can understand the look part but how do you feel a program? Do a Vulcan mind meld with it?) no matter what operating system you use.

An exemplary success story of GNU/Linux on the desktops in Canada; another new example from Craigslist

One thing holding back the greater adoption of free software in this country is free software.

Familiarity undoubtedly ranks among the largest barriers to open source adoption — software, like so many other things, is habit-forming. Much of that familiarity, at least among younger users, comes from the prevalence of proprietary applications in education, an area awash with government regulations, competitive bidding, and its own habit-induced hangups.

Horizons Regional Council will take open-source software for a spin on its desktop computers early this year under a push to bring free software to public sector PCs.

Updates on ODF progress around the world, among developers, and in committees