Free Software industry criticises remarks by Commission's Vice President Siim Kallas: The European Commission (EC) has given in to the demands of lobbyists for Microsoft and SAP when it revised a key document on interoperability between electronic government services.

A project to protect national internet infrastructure in Estonia is planning to publish some of the tools it has developed as open source under the European Union Public Licence (EUPL). The project, run by the National Informatics Centre (RIA), is already using a number of open source tools in its goal to monitor Estonian network traffic and prevent network problems.

Opposition to Free software inside the European Commission comes from familiar directions; Latest example is Siim Kallas, who is close to Microsoft

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) is pressuring the European Commission to remove the last vestiges of support for Open Standards from the latest version of the EU's interoperability recommendations, the European Interoperability Framework. FSFE has obtained a copy of a letter sent to the Commission by the BSA last week.

The European Commission will take a more pro-active approach to its own use of Open Source and Open Standards. Xavier Heymans highlights the importance of a real and mature collaboration with communities where IT providers share their developments and adopt an "open source" philosophy.

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."

The final version of the important Digital Agenda for Europe has been leaked – and shows that the European Commission has betrayed open standards. Where an earlier draft had an entire section headed “Open Standards and Interoperability”, the latest version only uses the word “open” once in the corresponding section “Interoperability and standards.”

Open source writers who are also market players, like our Matt Asay and Infoworld’s Savio Rodrigues, are dumping on a European Commission (EC) proposal to make software sellers liable for the problems in their code, just as dishwasher makers are liable for problems.

The first time that the European Commission's vice president talked about the Digital Agenda which was recently published. Neelie Kroes speech was the first time that she talked about the Digital Agenda in public, and she provided quite a bit of interpretation.