In Windhoek last week, the Ministerial Bureau of the fifth Pan African Conference of Ministers for Public or Civil Service met to review progress on the collective work of the various public service ministers. Among the themes covered was that of e-governance and free and open source software (FOSS).

Open Document format (ODF) yesterday became an official standard for South African government communications.

You must admire their tenacity. Gary Edwards and the pseudonymous "Marbux". The mythology of Silicon Valley is filled with stories of two guys and a garage founding great enterprises. And here we have two guys, and through blogs, interviews, and constant attendance at conferences, they have become some of the most-heard voices on ODF. Maybe it is partly due to the power of the name?

IBM joins forces with OpenOffice.org to contribute code and resources starting with the iAccessible2 accessibility tool. Once it's assimilated into OpenOffice.org, it'll make ODF more attractive to governments, which often require that the technology they purchase be accessible to all of their users, including the disabled.

Although the ISO process gives Malta the same voice as China, the reality is that national support for Microsoft formats is critical to the future of the MS-Office lock-in. We look at the figures behind the NO votes...

The Xiph.Org Foundation, creators of Vorbis, FLAC, and others, has launched an initiative to promote existing Open Media formats, theirs or otherwise. The project states that Free Software can only succeed by supporting Open Media formats. Let's promote this initiative!

"France has voted against adoption of Microsoft Corp.'s document format Office Open XML as an international standard, while Australia has decided to abstain..."

"...I strongly urge them to vote “No with Comments”, specifically with my comments..."