Open Source News

SI: Complaint over government purchase of proprietary software — published on Mar 08, 2010

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Slovenia's court of Auditors and Slovenia's anti-corruption authority have received an anonymous complaint regarding the government's procuring of proprietary software licences for computer operating systems and office applications, Slovenian media reported last Month.

EU: OSOR user survey part of thesis on governmental open source use — published on Feb 26, 2010

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A survey aimed at public administrators using the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR.eu) will be made part of a larger research into public organisation's use of open source.

DE: 'Vendor independence a non-issue in consolidation of government IT' — published on Feb 26, 2010

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Germany's federal government last December announced that it wants to consolidate several of its IT departments, in order to cut costs and reduce power consumption. Vendor independence is not mentioned, according to Silicon.de, a German IT news site.

Spanish government's adds software development site to OSOR's list — published on Feb 25, 2010

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The Spanish government's Technology Transfer Centre (CTT) is the newest name on the list of federated open source software sites in the European Union.

NL: Vendor lock-in frustrating open source desktop projects — published on Feb 25, 2010

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Vendor lock-in is forcing two municipalities in the Netherlands to stick to using proprietary office applications and other desktop software. The city of Amsterdam is saying it's move to open source on the desktop cannot be realised any time soon. The city of Heerenveen has canned its migration to OpenOffice.

Encoding tool to speed-up workflow of aid organisations — published on Feb 23, 2010

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A tool intended to make it easier for aid organisation to electronically exchange proposals and reports with the European Union's Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO) was published as open source earlier this month at the OSOR, the EU's Open Source Observatory and Repository.

ES: Galician government launches a promotion campaign on open source — published on Feb 15, 2010

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The government of Galicia, one of Spain's autonomous regions, wants to boost the use of free and open source software by its public administrations and citizens. The regional ministry for Modernisation and Innovation aims to bring together its previous initiatives on open source, it explains in a statement published on 27 January.

CZ: Open source to fix mandatory e-government's service — published on Feb 12, 2010

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At least three open source projects in the Czech Republic are working to allow platform independent access to the government's electronic message service. The mandatory service, called 'Datove schranky' (Data boxes) is currently only accessible on computers running Microsoft's proprietary operating system.

ES: Valencia migrates three open source GIS tools to OSOR — published on Feb 11, 2010

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The ministry of infrastructure and transport in Valencia, one of Spain's autonomous regions, last week began migration of three of its open source Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications and projects to the European Union's Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR).

Two thousand open source applications for the public sector — published on Feb 03, 2010

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The European Union's Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR.eu) as of today is offering public administrations access to more than two thousand free and open source applications.

ES: Administrations sponsor extension of open source network monitoring tool — published on Feb 01, 2010

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Several public administrations in Spain are sponsoring the development of Zorb, an open source extension to Nagios, an open source network monitoring tool. Zorb allows users to fine-tune the processing of events generated from the monitored instances, hosts and services. Zorb has just been published on the OSOR Forge.

DE: Rural district uses open source to manage IT at schools — published on Jan 31, 2010

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The rural district (Landkreis) Wittmund in northwestern Germany is using GNU/Linux to centrally manage computers usage at eleven of its schools, reports Univention, one of the open source IT companies involved in the project.

UK: Government tightens procurement demands in open source policy — published on Jan 31, 2010

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The government of the United Kingdom earlier this week published a revision of its open source action plan. Key changes are on procurement, the cabinet says.

DK: Danish state administrations to use ODF — published on Jan 29, 2010

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The Danish parliament and the Danish minister for Science this morning agreed that the Danish state administrations should use open standards, including the Open Document Format (ODF), starting on 1 April 2011. A formal vote on the agreement is planned for next Tuesday.

Management tools for SMEs published as open source by Spain — published on Jan 29, 2010

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Comerzzia, tools that can help small and medium enterprises to manage their offices and points of sales, has just been released as open source by Centatic, the Spanish government's resource centre on open source and open standards.