Switzerland's Federal Administrative Court yesterday decided that a government organisation's renewal of its proprietary software licences without a public tender does not harm the business interests of open source software service providers.

"UNESCO, together with ITU, UNCTAD and UNDP, is organizing an open consultation for the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2010. All individuals, networks and organizations interested in this issue are invited to participate in the three-fold process, consisting of an online discussion, a questionnaire and a review meeting..."

Linux vendor Red Hat, and 17 other vendors, have protested a Swiss government contract given to Microsoft without any public bidding.

"The Federal Department of Justice and Police recently proposed to introduce legislation illegalizing so-called «hacker tools» in Switzerland as well [...] The current proposal can thus be considered as totally inappropriate, and will need a complete makeover.

"The FCC has finally published its order (adopted on August 1) directing Comcast to stop blocking BitTorrent traffic. The 34-page ruling makes for surprisingly enjoyable reading, at least as FCC publications go. The order follows the basic outline that was explained by Chairman Martin in his statement on August 1, 2008. But there are some interesting additional tidbits: ..."

"ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is a proposed enforcement treaty between United States, the European Community, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand and Mexico, with Canada set to join any day now..."

* http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta [...]

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Logistep, which supplies information on suspected file sharers to law firms around the world for use in copyright violation cases, has until Feb. 9 to respond to charges