Microsoft's involvement in US policy-making is worth attention

Why is it so hard to get governments (especially local government) to use open source software? Here are some ideas discussed during my keynote today in Oslo at GoOpen 2009 for practical steps various people, from citizens to policy wonks to representatives, can do to help get open source in actual use and delivering on its promise (and I know it's not easy)...

Sometimes, working on voting seems like running on a treadmill. Old disagreements need to be argued again and again. As long as I've been speaking in public about voting, I've discussed the need for voting systems' source code to be published, as in a book, to create transparency into how the systems operate. Or, put another way, trade secrecy is anathema to election transparency.

For the first time in history, the Philippine national elections to be held in 2010 will use an automated (electronic) polling system. At this point in time, our lawmakers are now debating on the issue of security of the voting machines that will be used in the polls.

National, state and local governments are all waking up to the opportunity open source offers. Washington state, the home of Microsoft, appears to be an exception.

US states want Microsoft supervision extended; Russian authorities view Microsoft as a monopoly

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has announced the government will throw out the controversial Section 92A of the Copyright Amendment (New Technologies) Act and start again. The provision involved a three strikes and you’re out plan for alleged copyright infringement. "Section 92a is not going to come into force as originally written.

China's security community is more concerned with vulnerabilities in its own computer networks than leveling attacks at the United States and other western countries, a white-hat hacker told attendees at the CanSecWest Security Conference on Thursday.