Tag Archives: #ossplease

Dear Cabinet Office, what part of open standards don’t you understand?

Posted on 10/02/2012 by woodsy

The Cabinet Office has announced a consultation on ‘open standards’ for software interoperability, data and document formats in government IT. This is the second such consultation on open standards: in January ComputerWeekly said it had unearthed evidence that Microsoft and … Continue reading →

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Haven’t we heard all this before?

Posted on 10/02/2012 by woodsy

The Register today carries an article entitled “UK.gov: We really are going to start buying open-source from SMEs“. On Tuesday last in London Liam Maxwell, Cabinet Office director of ICT futures, said that open source had grown up and it’s … Continue reading →

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US state of New Hampshire passes open source, open standards and open data bill

Posted on 06/02/2012 by woodsy

At the end of last week, both houses of the New Hampshire legislature passed HB418 (2012). This bill is “relative to the use of open source software and open data formats by state agencies and relative to the adoption of … Continue reading →

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Another call for the public sector to get involved in open source associations

Posted on 25/01/2012 by woodsy

Simon Phipps, director of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), has joined the calls for public sector organisations using open source software to get involved in open source associations (news passim). Speaking at the recent World Open Source Conference, Phipps is … Continue reading →

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Spain: Extremadura to migrate 40,000 public sector desktops to Debian

Posted on 23/01/2012 by woodsy

Spain’s Publico recently reported (Spanish) that the autonomous regional government of Extremadura is planning to move all 40,000 of its desktops to Debian Linux. In taking this step, Extremadura would be the leading Spanish public sector organisation for the use … Continue reading →

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Joining open source communities should be a requirement for public sector open source use

Posted on 19/01/2012 by woodsy

Karel De Vriendt, a recently retired European Commission official previously involved in the Commission’s policies and activities involving open source software, has recommended that public sector organisations using open source software should join the associated open source communities, or require … Continue reading →

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Public sector open source quote of the week: “EU laptops should have LibreOffice or OpenOffice”

Posted on 22/12/2011 by woodsy

But who said it? According to Joinup, it was Christian Ude, the Mayor of Munich, whose local authority is a European leader in the deployment of open source by the public sector in general and local authorities in particular. It … Continue reading →

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Helsinki city officials report high satisfaction with free software office suite

Posted on 13/12/2011 by woodsy

As the council in our home city moves away from its previous open source office suite (Star Office) to the dark side (aka Microsoft Office. Ed. ), news reaches the blogmeister’s inbox via the Free Software Foundation Europe reporting on … Continue reading →

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Public sector? Use open source? Take the survey

Posted on 12/12/2011 by woodsy

Are you in the public sector and do you use or contribute to free and open-source software for e-Government? If so, Joinup asks you to take this survey. The survey is enquiring about the policies for sharing and reusing free … Continue reading →

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DWP to pilot open source desktops

Posted on 06/12/2011 by woodsy

Well, who’d have believed it? (The blogmeister wouldn’t have for starters! Ed.) The UK’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is to trial open source desktop software in a move which could pave the way to the large-scale deployment of … Continue reading →

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