In the past week alone, Windows deals in Dubai, in Paris and even in Greece were announced not quite by Microsoft, but by Bill Gates, who had met politicians. We seem to recall press releases suggesting so — giving Gates all the credit. This was a not technical decision as much as a political one. Here is the latest news from Greece, which we have not covered yet (follow the links to find the rest).

Recently the Dutch government adopted a plan called - translated - 'Netherlands Open in Connection' * which describes how the system of tenders should be changed to migrate to open source software and software conforming to open standards. However, the very same Department of Finance that wrote this plan - because the parliament asked for it - has written a 'closed' document covered under copyright for a closed tender which is called 'GOUD' (Gold). For a large part, the tender indirectly only allows Microsoft software it seems**. Last time there was a closed tender, Microsoft was awarded a deal of €156M worth of software and Michael Robertson's Linspire €6M alternative was not even considered***.

The majority of the users Just Don't Know. The reference to the "Matrix" movie is both stunning and crystal clear. Right now, nine years after the first film was produced, I have been enlightened:

The US software giant has launched a new set of products aimed at standardising the provision of online services to citizens by public administrations. But while Microsoft says the move will help address the fragmentation of Internet services offered by local authorities, competitors argue it may pose a threat to the development of alternative software.

I’m the increasingly discontent owner of an Hotmail account (don’t laugh, I subscribed back when Hotmail wasn’t owned by Microsoft). Recently, in order to compete with Google on the Web, Hotmail’s interface was overhauled: it now has a “classic” interface, which works reasonably well but is still rather limited, and a supposedly “Full” interface that should make it the equal of sites like Google Apps and Yahoo Mail/Calendar/etc.

Microsoft creates FUD as it reports that Windows Vista has logged fewer vulnerabilities in its first year than XP, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Apple Mac OS X did in their first years.

This is an editorial about file conversions. It starts with a story about Free Software Magazine and our struggle with article formats, and continues explaining why the world needs to get rid of Office Open XML, which could create more problems than the Microsoft monopoly itself.

MICROSOFT PLANS an open source project to write a translator from binary document formats into Office Open XML (OOXML) formats.