Urging public administrations to use Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) and open standards is one thing. Getting them to really take the jump is quite another. In the Netherlands, the OSOSS programme is helping ministries and municipalities to make their IT strategies more open.

Steve Ballmer apparently likes open source. Well, so long as it drives Windows revenue. And doesn't replace any. Ever. In fact, as he said at an event in Microsoft last week in London that he hopes to see all open-source innovation going to Windows, rather than Linux (more below).

The GIMP image editor is preparing for the start of a new development cycle, and you can have your say in the way the next version looks by submitting a mock-up to the GIMP UI Brainstorm blog. User interface designer Peter Sikking spoke with us about the project and how it fits into the larger work of creating the GIMP's UI.

From recent media reports, casual readers could easily believe that OpenOffice.org, the popular free office suite, is fragmenting.

Beryl v. Vista aero, with a video. Beryl is looking slick.

At the Recent Ohio (GNU)LinuxFest, I talked about the importance of promoting your FOSS projects, covering some of the tasks project teams need to engage in, working with the press, and handling negative publicity. This is the first in a series of articles aimed at helping project teams by going into more details. Here we consider how your home page figures into your marketing process.

The result of six months of heavy development and testing, 2008 includes all the latest software and many enhancements over previous Mandriva Linux releases.

Tom Sanders is reporting that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave a talk at a company event in the UK last week saying that Red Hat customers need to pay Microsoft for its beloved IP, whatever it may consist of: