BigBirdy's blog

"Red Hat is to help the communist government of Kerala, in southwestern India, to deploy open-source software in its e-governance and literacy efforts. The Kerala government will make all efforts to develop free software, and will use free and open-source software in e-governance projects, according to a draft state IT policy released in January."

" The issue pits Microsoft's XML-based Office formats against the OpenDocument Format supported by the Open Document Foundation. A bill supporting open formats for the storage of New York state governmental documents has been filed by the state's Governmental Operations Committee chairwoman, making the Empire State the latest state to enter the ongoing debate over XML format standards."

" In the wake of repeated raids by Microsoft, selling open source software has taken the fancy of most partners in the southern states of India to resolve the issue of piracy that has been hovering over the channel for months."

" Within the context of a panel discussion at the LinuxTag event in Berlin Dr. Uwe Küster, the party whip of the parliamentary group of the Social Democrats (SPD) in the Bundestag, the lower chamber of Germany's federal parliament, said that the governing coalition would within the next two weeks submit a motion that would make open formats mandatory for the information technology of the federal authorities of the Federal Republic. This, Mr. Küster declared, would boost competition on the software market and strengthen the position of small and medium-sized enterprises."

"The benefits offered by FOSS have been particularly useful for poor developing countries around the world. In particular, the ability to obtain FOSS without licensing fees has proven to be very beneficial to the users in these regions as this makes information and communications technology (ICT) more affordable to them. The localization of software applications is also facilitated on a FOSS platform and this will further help towards bridging the digital divide." by Khairil Yusof

"Bungeni is a Parliamentary and Legislative Information System for drafting, managing, consolidating and publishing legislative and other parliamentary documents. It is being developed within the context the "Africa i-Parliaments Action Plan" of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). It is meant to contribute to making Parliaments more open and accessible to citizens ... virtually allowing them "inside Parliament" or Bungeni -- the Kiswahili word for "inside Parliament". PloneGov and Bungeni decide to join efforts to share experience and their developments."

"The popular Mozilla Firefox web browser has been translated into the South African Afrikaans language. Afrikaans is one of 11 official South African languages. The Afrikaans translation is the work of non-profit Translate.org.za and its volunteer community. This is the first official release of Afrikaans translations in the Firefox 2.0 series."

"A regional centre for Open Source Software Development will be set up by the West Bengal government with an investment of Rs two crore."

"Speaking to UNI on the sidelines of a seminar on "Open Document Format(ODF) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)" organised by Confederation of Indian Industry, State IT Minister Debesh Das said,"We are interested to set up a regional centre for open source software development centre. A budgetary allocation of Rs 2 crore has been approved for this." The state government is trying to tie up with a university as its academic partner to take the project forward."

"Open source is a strange phrase. To many, it suggests someone has left the top off the ketchup bottle, but in the hi-tech world it is both a way of life and some say the future of the computer industry."

"A bill supporting open formats for the storage of New York state governmental documents has been filed by the state's Governmental Operations Committee chairwoman, making the Empire State the latest state to enter the ongoing debate over XML format standards."