On Monday, 30th April 2012 the Policy Exchange think tank is organising an event entitled Open Standards for Open Government? at The Ideas Space, Policy Exchange, 10 Storey’s Gate, Westminster, SW1P 3AY (map). The UK Government is currently consulting on its open standards policy. Technology standards are important to ensure interoperability; open standards are often […]
Bristol Wireless was donated* some redundant laptops yesterday that were surplus to requirements. Their arrival has encouraged volunteer Acesabe to try experimenting, as about an hour ago he tweeted: Think I’ll have a pop at installing ChromeOS on one of those old laptops we got donated @BristolWireless yesterday http://chromeos.hexxeh.net Please let us know how it […]
Do you know a certain politician who should really learn more about Open Standards? This is the question that the Free Software Foundation Europe has asked in the last couple of days. The article goes on to ask readers if they have tried to explain the importance of Open Standards to your boss, friends, local […]
All public sector organisations in Iceland are increasing their use of free and open source software, Joinup reports, and the country’s government recently launched a one year migration project for all of its departments. Project leader Tryggvi Björgvinsson states: “The goal of the project is not to migrate public institutions to free and open source […]
This year’s Document Freedom Day, which celebrates information accessibility and raises awareness of Open Standards, will take place on Wednesday, 28th March. Here in Bristol Wireless, we’ve been using the Open Document Format (ODF) Open Standard for exchanging documents internally for many years now. We like it since it has many advantages: firstly, there’s the […]
In about one month’s time (April 21st to be precise, according to Sam Downie. Ed.) a delegation of Bristol Wikipedians is due to visit Monmouth. Why Monmouth you may ask? And why Wikipedians too? What has a small Welsh town with a millennium or so of history, that was home to the Tudor family and […]
Cenatic reports that ONFSA – the National Observatory for Open Source Software – has published its 2011 public sector open source software use survey. According to the survey, which covered 198 central government bodies, most of Spanish central government organisations use free and/or open source software for both server and desktop systems. More specifically, 9 […]
Back in October, we gave very early notice (news passim) of the 2012 Flossie Unconference taking place in London on 25th and 26th May 2012 at Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, E1 4NS (map). News has now arrived that the submissions deadlines has been extended to 19th March 2012 and further details […]
The latest release (version 4.1.1) of CiviCRM, the open source customer relationship management (CRM) system for non-profits, NGOs and advocacy organisations, now features integration for WordPress, in addition to its traditional integration for the Joomla and Drupal content management systems. Read the original release announcement. It looks as if there’s going to be plenty to […]
Denmark’s Transport Ministry has moved to the open source LibreOffice productivity suite as part of a package changes intended to help it save DKr. 1.5 mn. per year on its IT costs. However, a spokesman for the Ministry has stated that cost was not the primary consideration for the move. It was instead prompted by […]
We Linux users are spoilt; we benefit from using free and open source software every day. Now Windows users can once again* benefit from it more, with the launch of the VALO-CD (VALO is the Finnish acronym for Free & Open Source Software. Ed.) VALO-CD contains all the best free and open source programs for […]
Earlier today, your ‘umble correspondent (are you really a letter writer composed entirely of deer offal? Ed.😉 ) received the email below from the Free Software Foundation. In December, Microsoft apparently conceded to public pressure by quietly updating the Windows 8 logo certification requirements with a mandate that a desktop computer user must be able […]
It’s been announced today on The Document Foundation’s blog that Berlin in Germany will host this year’s LibreOffice Conference. The Document Foundation members jointly decided on the location for their conference in a public poll that closed last week, whose result has been announced with the above-mentioned blog post. In the end, it was a […]
The H-Online reports that Coverity’s latest Coverity Scan Open Source Report has found that the quality of open source code is equal to, or even better than that of proprietary software. All told, Coverity analysed over 37 million lines of code from 45 of the most active open source projects of 2011 and also examined […]
Earlier this week, the chief scribe received a cunning invitation by email to attend the Annual Conference and AGM of Wikimedia UK, the local UK chapter that supports the work of Wikipedia, the world’s largest open source project. This year, the date will be 12th May and the venue London’s Science Museum. To quote from […]
EZPress (Dutch) and Joinup report that at the end of last year Rotterdam mental health provider Riagg Rijnmond replaced its ageing proprietary desktop systems with a 290 user LTSP thin client system based on Xubuntu (that’s Ubuntu coupled with the XFCE window manager. Ed.). Riagg Rijnmond was previously using a Citrix-based thin client system, but […]
Greeklug, the Greek free software advocacy group, has donated a free and open source software computer lab to a children’s shelter in the village of Filyro, north of Thessaloniki, Joinup reports. Apart from providing installation and hardware, the group is also organising training courses for the children. “We contacted the orphanage, offering our expertise, our […]
One the frequent criticisms made by lovers of free and open source operating systems is the great difficulty of buying hardware either with Linux pre-installed or that doesn’t involve paying the ‘Microsoft Tax‘ (i.e. a common complaint from those who want to purchase a computer without a copy of Windows pre-installed and without paying extra […]
When the chief scribe first starting using Linux regularly some years ago, he ventured slightly further than the usual Gnome and KDE desktops, occasionally getting to grips with the slightly more esoteric WindowMaker window manager. Slashdot now reports that a new team of developers has recently resumed development of WindowMaker. The new development team has […]
It’s February 14th and all over the world, swains are getting knock-kneed and tongue-tied as they profess their love to the objects of their desire (OK, it’s Valentine’s Day, you long-winded beggar. Now get on with it! Ed.). Right, now that’s out of the way, let’s just say we’re once again supporting the Free Software […]