April 2010

List of News published in April 2010

ES: Open source resource centre publishes new manuals — published on Mar 30, 2010

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Three Spanish manuals, explaining how to use the open source browser Firefox, how to use email and calendaring client Evolution and instant message client Pidgin and how to use the image manipulation software Gimp and graphic application Inkscape, were made publicly available by Cenatic, Spain's national resource centre on free and open source, yesterday.

IT: Constitutional court says administrations can favour open source — published on Mar 30, 2010

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Public administrations in Italy may make laws that favour their use of free and open source over proprietary alternatives, according to Italy's Constitutional Court in a ruling published last week Tuesday.

CH: School IT agency recommends switching to open source — published on Mar 30, 2010

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The Swiss agency for IT in education, SFIB, is recommending that all schools switch to open source software. The IT agency is developing support offerings for schools that are using free and open source software.

Tool to manage electronic petitions supports many languages — published on Mar 24, 2010

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A first version of an open source tool to help manage electronic petitions, ePetitions, was published on the OSOR last week. The project aims to develop a web application that offers support for e-petitions in many languages. The software was tried by the city council of the city of Bristal in the United Kingdom and the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames.

Groups in eleven EU member states participate in Document Freedom Day — published on Mar 23, 2010

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In at least eleven EU member states, groups promoting the use of open standards and open source software, are preparing for Document Freedom Day, 31 March. With workshops, presentations and demonstrations, they aim to make computer users aware of open formats for electronic documents. Many groups will focus on public administrations and governments.

BE: Minister: "Open source prevents monopolies, increases innovation" — published on Mar 17, 2010

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"Open source prevents monopolies, helps to share knowledge and increases social innovation", says Vincent Van Quickenborne, Belgium's minister for the Simplification of the Administration. He expects that public administrations will increasingly turn to this type of software, in part because it helps to cut costs.

RO: 'Vendor independence not a political issue', open source groups say — published on Mar 17, 2010

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Free and open source enthusiasts in Romania say their politicians are not yet interested in fighting for vendor independence.

BE: Three e-ID projects published as open source — published on Mar 16, 2010

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The Belgian Federal ICT advisory body Fedict published on OSOR three open source software projects related to the country's electronic identity card. The tools are intended to increase usage of this e-ID card, but also to allow other developers to write applications for it.

Extremadura publishes agribusiness supply chain tool as open source — published on Mar 16, 2010

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The Extremadura government has published as open source JEXTraza, a supply chain tool meant to help agribusinesses verify and manage product information from source to destination. The tool is meant to be used in combination with OpenBravo, an open source enterprise resource system.

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.

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).

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.

German government publishes XML converter on the OSOR Forge — published on Jan 29, 2010

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Genericoder, an open source XML converter, has just been published by Germany's Bundesstelle für Informationstechnik (Federal Office for Information Technology) in Cologne. The application converts lists of csv code into XML files that are compliant to OASIS Genericode Version 1.0, but according to its developers can be adapted to carry out other transformations.

IT: Public administration's portal builder adds business intelligence — published on Jan 28, 2010

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The Java Agile Portal System (jAPS 2.0), open source software designed to help Italy's public administration's build specialised websites, is about to get boosted with open source business intelligence (BI) options.

ES: Open Source GIS systems to be used by Spanish Wine makers — published on Jan 27, 2010

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Wine makers in Spain will soon be able to use the gvSIG open source geographic information services developed in a large part with the help of several of Spain's public administrations.

PL: Police considers moving to open source — published on Jan 27, 2010

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The Polish Police force wants to increase its use of free and open source software in order to cut costs, announces Andrzej Trela, Deputy Chief of Police and responsible for logistics, in an interview in the Police force's monthly newsletter, published on 15 January.

EU: Open Universities open source master published first two books — published on Jan 19, 2010

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The first two course books have just been published online for what is intended to become a university master programme on free and open source software and open standards.