To coincide with EURO 2008, I’m embarking on a virtual European tour, taking a quick look at open source policies and deployment projects in the 16 nations that are competing in the tournament. The Czech Republic team was just three minutes away from qualifying for the knockout stages of EURO 2008 on Sunday before Turkey managed to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 win.

The Czech Standards Institute (CSI) has voted to make Microsoft's Open Office XML format a standard, the organization said Tuesday.

Earlier on we mentioned the Europe-based Blender and recently we also mentioned Microsoft’s role in pushing for software patents in Europe, using ‘proxies’ as large as the United States government. You may be interested in the following perspective on the latest Blender story.

The BSA continues to make life a lot harder for Free/libre software; message about the situation in Finland is reproduced

What would you say if you heard that OpenOffice.org had an impressive 22% share of the market? It does, in Poland and the Czech Republic. ... The method used was to examine fonts installed on systems to identify various office suites.

An established magazine argues that software patents are not necessarily part of the US-EU (USPTO/EPO) harmonisation

Yesterday we alerted about the latest attempt to shove software patents into Europe. It’s a back-door technique and Benjamin has more on this subject in the following slideshow. He has also been pointing to articles such as this one because Microsoft’s appeal in Europe, he believes, is more than it seems on the surface.

The latest news about patents with emphasis on software

New signs that attempts are being made to legalise software patent without ever debating the subject