A German scientific research institute is using an open-source database running on Linux and x86 hardware to store global seismic activity data and to interpret that data. The purpose is to ensure that countries around the world are in compliance with the terms of the nuclear test ban treaty.

In my last post, I talked about the migration of a rural community in northern Nicaragua to Ubuntu Linux. After a year’s hard work, one of the biggest government offices has begun to migrate their systems from proprietary software to FOSS alternatives.

EISCO conferences have become a major event for politicians and experts working at local and regional level to discuss e-Government and Information Society strategies. Representatives of the open source initiative PloneGov have been invited to share their experience in developing international collaboration and sharing open source software between public organizations worldwide.

Developing countries are using open source technology to build educational initiatives that are impressive when compared to socially-devastating education policies in the United States, which is much richer and could easily afford to replicate these outstanding programs in countries like Brazil.

SourceForge, the world’s largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications, appears to blocked in Mainland China on the eve of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. A screen copy of the command “tracert www.sourceforge.net” shows that the problem is a router inside China Telecom.

The Central Board of Directors approved the document "Standards file format office" presented by the Commission Sector Development Computer recommends that the use of open standards ODF and PDF for the creation, storage and exchange of documents in the office and udelen in its relationship with the rest of society.

The Utah Department of Health has enlisted the Collaborative Software Initiative to develop a system for meeting CDC requirements for infectious disease tracking and reporting. The system is being built using the community sourcing model, a model that mixes both open source and commercial interest elements.