It's a familiar story. Microsoft does a secret deal with a company over patent licences. Almost no details are provided about which patents, how much money has changed hands, or why, except for one vaguely worded press release that talks about how such secret deals benefit the customer through openness and innovation.

Microsoft signs secret deals in Italy and the public that pays for it is denied access to information

The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit started off with a town-hall-style question-and-answer session with about 70 representatives of kernel developers, Linux users, and independent software vendors.

Microsoft Romania under scrutiny after blind government handouts; Microsoft-centric assault on EIF (European Interoperability Framework) revisited

Encouraging signs of ODF adoption in Europe, signs of possible intervention by Microsoft et al.

Free Software Foundation Europe is asking the Members of the European Parliament to wait for legal advice before voting on a unitary patent for Europe. While a proposal is on the Parliament's agenda for the coming week, a legal opinion by the European Court of Justice is expected later this month.

ACTA aims at circumventing democracy to impose now and later repressive legislation through secret negotiations. The European Parliament now has a unique occasion to firmly oppose it.

A member of the EU Parliament, Heidi Rühle, representative of the Green Party, has presented a question regarding whether or not Microsoft should be considered as having failed to fulfill the conditions to participate in public procurement procedures in Europe, as laid out in Article 93(b) and (c) of Financial Regulation.

"Paris, September 16th 2009 - We Must Protect Net Neutrality1 in Europe! Organizations from all around Europe share their concern of seeing Net Neutrality being sacrificed during the conciliation procedure of the directives of the EU Telecoms Package.