Yesterday we wrote about Microsoft’s attempt to ‘consume’ ODF. Joining the skepticism now is the man behind the open source definition and a vocal critic of Novell’s deal with Microsoft. Bruce Perens does not trust Microsoft, either. He explains why.
Read more »Document Formats Roundup: ODF Gets the Upper Hand
http://boycottnovell.com –
Increasing levels of evidence that ODF gives Microsoft a run for the money, a run from the law (and a runaway from EU fines).
Read more »Software Patents in Europe and Microsoft’s Huge Lobbying Budget as of Late
http://boycottnovell.com –
Microsoft's lobbying levels seems to be rising as attempts to contaminate the EU with mathenmatical patents trigger some alarms
Read more »Petition for Open Standards in European Parliament
http://www.openparliament.eu –
The signatories of this petition, representing a Community for Freedom of Choice and Market in the European Union, draw the attention of the Members of the European Parliament to the current situation where the institution’s ICT systems are locked into the products of one vendor, warns about the implications of this for participative democracy and for fair competition, and calls for action to promote Open Standards and Interoperability.
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Microsoft Appeals €899M Fine
http://www.microsoft-watch.com –
Microsoft is seeking clarity about its most recent fine. What's not clear about dollars and cents? The exchange rate?
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Category: Opposition Tags:
Galileo: ESA's most advanced navigation satellite launched tonight
http://www.esa.int –
Should global navigation satellite systems be in public domain like Internet? I hope Galileo data & services will be available for the free software community!!
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Microsoft may be barred from EU public procurement procedure
http://arstechnica.com –
The undeclared war between the Microsoft and the European Union has been relatively quiet for the past few months; we haven't heard much from either party since the EU fined Microsoft $1.36 billion. The scarcely settled cauldron between the two organizations, however, is about to receive a good stirring, due to the actions of EU Parliment representative and Green Party member, Heide Rühle.
Read more »Microsoft is on the Ropes in Europe
http://boycottnovell.com –
A few days ago we wrote about European nations that rejected OOXML. We later showed how Microsoft/CompTIA lobbyist Jan van den Beld made implicit threats against governments that ‘dare’ to refuse and ignore OOXML.
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Category: Government Tags:
Microsoft being investigated
http://www.pcworld.com –
EU initiates investigation against Microsoft's corruption of ISO...
Read more »EU investigation into Open XML vote still ongoing
http://www.news.com –
European antitrust regulators are investigating whether Microsoft abused its desktop software market dominance in its effort to standardize the Office Open XML file formats.
Read more »EU pumps €10m into open source privacy management
http://www.techworld.com –
The European Union is contributing 10 million euro (around £8 million) in sponsorship to a project called PrimeLife, which aims to develop open source tools for personal privacy management and protection, and get the community at large to adopt them.
Read more »President of EU Academy for Standardisation criticizes OOXML, says duplicative standards conflict with WTO rules
http://www.groklaw.net –
Here's a story I wasn't expecting, but some of you more familiar with WTO rules perhaps were, a story that the president of the European Academy for Standardisation, Tineke Egyedi, is critical of OOXML being made a standard when ODF exists already, and she believes duplicative standards conflict with WTO rules:
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Open Source for Sovereignty
http://blogs.sun.com –
It's not just European government that's opting for open source. Today the NSA (the super-secret spy agency in the US) have announced they are joining in with OpenSolaris. Barton has an interview that explores this more. I think we'll see more and more government engagement as the adoption-led market takes hold.
Using Free software from open source communities makes perfect sense for governments, and not just for the obvious reasons of up-front savings on license fees.
Read more »Category: Government Tags:
EU: European Commission to increase its use of Open Source
http://ec.europa.eu –
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."
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Category: Government Tags:
Responding to the EU on DRM
http://blogs.sun.com –
In response to a request from the European Union concerning DRM and interoperability, Sun has submitted a lengthy written response.
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Category: Legal Tags:
