An important open source event will take place in Paris on September 24th and 25th 2008 : it is called "Paris Capitale du Libre" (PCL) and it is organised by the FNILL (French national federation of the free
software industry): http://www.paris-libre.org/.

In the past week alone, Windows deals in Dubai, in Paris and even in Greece were announced not quite by Microsoft, but by Bill Gates, who had met politicians. We seem to recall press releases suggesting so — giving Gates all the credit. This was a not technical decision as much as a political one. Here is the latest news from Greece, which we have not covered yet (follow the links to find the rest).

"On November 17th 2004, Bill Gates visited UNESCO headquarters in Paris to sign a partnership agreement with the organization..."

"...this is the second Paris on Rails conference, and last year's was a tremendous success. Expect another year of great presentations from leading Ruby on Rails developers. It all takes place December 10th at the Grand auditorium de la Cité des Sciences, Paris La Villette..."

"...Paris Web 2007 is coming. Bigger, sexier and this time for 3 days. Put that in your calendar. 15, 16 and 17 November 2007, the French Web Connection is meeting to talk about the Web, quality in development, design, accessibility..."

"...I'm glad to announce that the Mozilla Add-ons Workshop in Paris is now open for subscriptions ! It will take place on Saturday September 20th. William talked a bit about this event. Our objective is to bring together French-speaking XUL developers, hackers, Web developers... to discuss about Mozilla technologies..."

"Ironically, as the hearing for the first out of three assignements introduced by French consumer association UFC-Que Choisir against systematic sale of pre-installed Windows with Personal Computers was held in Court in Paris, we learned that manufacturer Asus was condemned in Caen, Normandy (case Hordoir vs. Asus, 30 April 2008) to reimburse the client for unwanted software licences.

Bill Gates steps down as the Chairman of Microsoft on July 1st to transition to full time philanthropic efforts with the Gates Foundation. However, I wonder how effective Bill will be other than writing checks. You see Bill's never played well with others.

"Hear what Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates had to say during his last official visit to the UK before he 'retires' later this year. IT PRO attended the special event hosted by the Institute of Directors (IoD) and, after Gates had done his thing there was a Q&A session with the billionaire and industry figurehead." And also note how some of his answers match up rather nicely with F/OSS.