Open Source News

BE: Political party moving to a complete open source desktop — published on Aug 31, 2010

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Ecolo, a green political party in Belgium, is planning to complete its move to a complete open source desktop system by the end of 2011. On the 220 workstations in its main office, it will gradually replace the underlying operating system to Ubuntu Linux, says Sebastien Bollingh, the party's ICT manager.

EU: International team developing open source hospital information system — published on Aug 31, 2010

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An international team of software developers specialising in medical systems is working on a hospital information system. Earlier this month on the OSOR Forge, the project began soliciting others to join the team. "If you are willing to participate in this great community, there are plenty of things to be done, from translation, quality control, adding new functionality to localization."

EU: Rise in use of EUPL for publishing open source software — published on Aug 31, 2010

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The European Union's open source licence, (European Union Public Licence, EUPL) is being used more and more. A quarter of the projects available on the European Commission's software development site, the OSOR Forge, 47 out of 183 projects, are published using the EUPL. On Sourceforge, a commercial venture for open source software development based in the US, the licence is now selected by 49 projects. One year ago there were none.

UK: 'Government use of ODF would help break vendor lock-in' — published on Aug 30, 2010

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A UK government's decicion to use ODF (Open Document Format) for its electronic documents, would help public administrations overcome vendor lock-in for office applications, says Liam Maxwell, councillor for Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead. He says the move will start the process to the billions of savings that British government needs to find in unproductive areas of spending.

EE: Tallin city and college fund poll and referenda application — published on Aug 30, 2010

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Diara, an open source application allowing public administrations to us the Internet to organise polls, referendums, petitions, public inquiries and allowing to record electronic votes using electronic ID cards, is developed with support from the city of Tallin and the College of Technology in Estonia.

FR: Marseille city administration can't get rid of vendor lock-in — published on Aug 27, 2010

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The administration of the French city of Marseille is giving up its plans to decrease it's IT vendor lock-in. The move to OpenOffice is almost completed, but about 35 percent of all workstations are forced to continue to also run a proprietary office suite, because of applications that link exclusively to that suite's spreadsheet and text editor.

ES: Andalusia government studying switch to open source desktop — published on Aug 27, 2010

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The government of Andalusia, one of Spain's autonomous regions, is preparing to use a complete open source desktop environment. The analysis of requirements of such a desktop system is nearly completed, the next step will be a few small scale tests, according to a presentation by José Félix Ontañón, one of the software developers involved.

EU: University publishes Braille extension for OpenOffice — published on Aug 24, 2010

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The Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium published odt2braille, a Braille extension to OpenOffice, a open source suite of office productivity tools, earlier this month.

IT: Municipality of Modena removing vendor dependency office tools — published on Aug 24, 2010

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The Italian municipality of Modena is well on its way to become independent from a major IT vendor for its office productivity tools, reports Laura Seidenari, instructor at the city's IT department.

EU: Guide on procurement of open source revised — published on Aug 21, 2010

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The Guideline on public procurement of Open Source Software, was revised in June 2010. The latest version includes references to recent procurement policies developed by Spain and Malta and to this year's approval by Italy's constitutional court on the country's Piedmont regional administration procurement law.

EU: Practical Guide to using Free Software in the Public Sector — published on Aug 03, 2010

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This guide refers to the french copyright law; however considerations on licensing are interesting for all. OSOR publishes an updated version (June 2010)

AT: Increasing number of schools turn to open source — published on Jul 25, 2010

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The number of schools in Austria that are considering to use or are using open source is increasing, according to school IT administrators and open source developers involved in education.

EU: 3.3 million to continue projects on open source and reusable data — published on Jul 17, 2010

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The European Commission is planning to spend 3.344 million Euro until 2016 to continue the services provided by its projects - such as OSOR.eu and Semic.eu - on open source and on electronic data exchange.

FR: Defence ministry to test open source office tools — published on Jul 17, 2010

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France's ministry of Defence will next year test open source office productivity tools, according to answers given by the ministry to written questions by Bernard Carayon, a member of France's parliament, about a framework contract with a proprietary software vendor.

ES: 'Involve universities and local tech companies when moving to open source' — published on Jul 15, 2010

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Public administrations considering a move to open source, should make sure they involve universities and IT companies, said Martin Garcia, head of IT at the department for Infrastructure and Transport at the Valencia regional administration, yesterday at a conference in the city of Guadalajara, Spain.