"Last week, the Globalisation Institute, a conservative free market think tank, advised the European Commission to require all PCs are to be sold without a pre-installed operating system. "There is no meaningful competition between operating systems", the institute argues in the policy advisory. "Microsoft's dominant position is not in the public interest. It limits the market and has slowed technical development to the prejudice of consumers."

.AO: Mandriva and CNTI have signed an agreement by which Mandriva will bring its knowledge and experience to Angola, providing technology solutions, training and consulting services. "We are very proud to be involved in this initiative to bridge the digital divide in Angola. This success validates our emerging markets strategy. We look forward to making this a success for Angola and an example for other African countries," adds François Bancilhon, CEO of Mandriva. (19-09-2007)

.BE: Belgium's Council of Ministers last month approved a proposal that requires federal government departments to use open file formats for exchanging documents in september 2008. As it stands now, the only accepted standard is the Open Document Format (ODF). This increases the pressure on Microsoft to come up with support for open standards.. (05-07-2006)

.BG:Lack of support hampers governmental use of Open Source. Bulgaria lacks companies that can assist public administration with the use of Open Source software. The low numbers are in stark contrast with those for the use of Open Source in Bulgarian private sector, where about 50 per cent of the companies use Open Source software, according to the Bulgarian Association of Software Companies. (17-05-2007)

.CU: Cuba's government is trying to shake off the yoke of at least one capitalist empire —Microsoft— by joining with socialist Venezuela in a program to convert its computers to open-source "free" software. Both governments say they are trying to wean state agencies from using Microsoft. (15-09-2007)

.DE: Switching to open source software in Danish public administration has an economic scope of several billion DKK every year. This is the conclusion of The Danish Board of Technology. The working group has compiled a detailed analysis of the use of open source software in public administration in Denmark. One reason the open source software is competitive is because it allows users to change, to correct and to distribute the software and therefore to a greater extent leaves the user in control of changes.

.ES: Congress commission forces public IT to accept Open Source. A commission in the Spanish parliament, dealing with issues of public administration, last Friday approved a law that grants Spanish citizens the right to use software of their own choice when they communicate electronically with the government. The law needs approval from the senate. A majority of political parties in the commission agreed with the proposed 'Law regulating Electronic Access by Citizens to the Public Administration', Ley para el Acceso Electrónico de los Ciudadanos a las Administraciones Públicas, or Laecap. (18-04-2007)

.FI: The Finnish Ministry of Finance, Public Management Department, releases a Working Paper on the use of open source methods in the development of tailored applications for State administration. Also included is a Working Group Report entitled 'Procurement of tailored software for State administration - the effects of open source' - which concludes that the use of open source is a viable alternative, the main reason being the transparency of the system. The State should order all its software with an open source code. Behind this demand we can thus find, on the one hand, principles of policy, and, on the other, practical principles." (01-02-2007)

.FR: A French court in Puteaux this week ordered Acer, the world's third largest computer maker to refund a customer who did not want the preloaded Microsoft Windows operating system and other applications.Acer had tried to settle the case with its French customer Antoine Gutzwiller, offering him 30 euro. Gutzwiller refused and took Acer to court.

The court ruled on July 23 that Acer had to refund 311,85 euro for the entire collection of pre-installed software. The company was also ordered to pay a fine of 500 euro and 150 euro to cover Gutzwiller's legal fees. The court's published its decision on 18 September. The court referred in its decision to Acer's contract, which states the possibility of refunds for unused software. Gutzwiller had bought the Acer laptop for 599 euro last year. (27-09-2007)

.IN: TPURAM: Free software has been made mandatory for IT practicals of SSLC examination slated for March, 2008.
The Director of Public Instruction (DPI) has issued orders making free software compulsory. It says Linux Operating System should be used for IT education in eighth, ninth and tenth standards. Till last year, schools had the freedom to conduct the examinations either in free software or in Microsoft platform. For the purpose, fully Linuxbased text books have been prepared for standard X and Linux-based supplementary text books have been prepared for standard VIII and standard IX. (16-09-2007)

.IT: Parliament to switch to GNU/Linux and Open Office. The IT department of the Italian Parliament this Wednesday presented plans for the migration of all of its two hundred servers and more than 3500 desktop PCs to GNU/Linux and Open Office.The move is estimated by some to save about three million euro per year. The Parliament had earlier this year voted in favour of a proposal to use only open source software. (16-07-2007)

.JP: Agreement Signed With Japanese Government Information-Technology Promotion Agency (IPA) to Help Increase Participation of Japanese Developers in Linux and Open Source. The Linux Foundation and IPA will work together to accelerate adoption of Linux and open source software in areas of technology development, standardization and legal activities. (01-10-2007)

.LT: Open Document Format (ODF), the ISO approved standard for electronic office documents, was made a Lithuanian standard on July 31. The Lithuanian Standards Board recently published the ODF decision on its website. "The approval of ODF is a step towards a safe and open information society", the Lithuanian Open Source organisation, Atviras kodas Lietuva (AKL) comments, "It helps to guarantee technological neutrality and ODF will bring economic benefits to the country". (16-08-2007)

.LV: Open Source software meet on digital signatures. The Latvian Open Source Association, Latvijas Atēvrtā Koda Asociācija, and the Linux Centre of the Latvian University are organising a seminar on the use of eDoc, a national format for digital signatures in Open Source software. (10-08-2007)

.MK: NComputing is showing in Macedonia, with its Ubuntu Linux based servers and virtual PC terminals, that there's more than one way to get inexpensive Linux desktops into students' hands. When completed, Macedonia's Computer for Every Child initiative will have deployed approximately 160,000 NComputing virtual PC terminals and 20,000 NComputing enabled PCs running Ubuntu. (18-09-2007)

.NL: The Dutch government has set a soft deadline of April 2008 for its agencies to start using open-source software — freely distributed programs that anyone can modify — the Netherlands Economic Affairs Ministry said. Government organizations will still be able to use proprietary software and formats but will have to justify it under the new policy. Van Scherrenburg said the plan was approved unanimously at a meeting of two parliamentary commissions. (13-12-2007)

.NO: The Norwegian Minister of Modernisation, Morten Andreas Meyer, has promised that his government will stop using proprietary software and transfer to open source. Meyer outlined an initiative to digitise government relations. This includes a commitment that all public institutions will plan the introduction of open source systems by next year. He also said that every citizen would be given their own home page on the government's servers to make dealing with the state easier. "Proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communication between citizens and government," explained Meyer. (28-06-2005)

.PL: Poland recommends open standards. Poland is recommending the use of open standards in governmental IT projects. The Council of Ministers in April approved national IT guidelines, which advise the use of open, publicly available IT standards. "One of the top three priorities announced by the government for development of the state's ICT systems is technological neutrality which will be achieved by using open, publicly available IT standards", KROSS said in a statement. "We fully support this decision." (05-07-2007)

.PT: Business consortium to promote use of Open Source. The ESOP, the Association of Portuguese Companies for Open Source Software, is to be unveiled on September 25. Portugal's use of Open Source software is on the rise, according to IDC, an IT research company. This is especially the case in public administration. José Ruivo, a second ESOP spokesperson interviewed by Sapo: "We should make sure Portugal does not miss the boat. Adopting Open Source can make Portugal more competitive and we intend to help it get there." (11-09-2007)

.RO:The success of Romania's first major Open Source event should entice the government to consider developing policies to promote this type of software. "The conference was a bigger success than we expected", says Lucian Savluc, the initiator of ROSI, Romanian Open Source and Free Software Initiative. "There is lots of interest in this type of software and a growing community of developers and users." (16-08-2007)

.RU: Russian OS is to be installed on every school computer in Russia by 2009. Furthermore, every pupil will get the opportunity to operate the applied software produced in Russia, Leonid Reiman, acting Minister of Communication stated at a press conference. Experts and market participants consider the terms within which software is to be developed quite reasonable. According to Mr. Reiman, that might significantly reduce Russian dependence on foreign software. (14-09-2007)

.SE: Sweden's public sector's interest in Open Source is growing, writes Mats Östling, IT-strategist for The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and the Federation of Swedish County Councils. Two Swedish city councils recently discovered how Open Source helps save taxpayers money. Recent studies by two national government agencies implementing Open Source applications, the National Police Board and the Swedish Armed Forces, will increase the attention for Open Source. (06-09-2007)

.TR: Yerelnet, Turkish for 'local network', attracts more visitors than any other web site targeting local governments, concludes Yildiz. The web site uses only Open Source software, which greatly enhances flexibility. This makes it easy to add new applications and projects, which can be done without increasing the IT costs. (03-10-2007)

.GR: The Greek city Heraklion on the island Crete, wants Open Source software and open standards for its new eGovernment portal. The island capital just published a call for tender, preferring Open Source software as well as open standards. The city hopes the portal will also improve the quality of service. (20-03-2007)

.UK: The Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm) in Great Britain is participating in a local-government study of worldwide scope regarding their readiness for the e-government framework envisioned by planners.Twenty local governments are already trying out StarOffice, and some 300 desktops at the Penwith (Cornwall) District Council have made the switch. As in Finland, lower licensing costs are given as the reason. The British Office of Government Commerce, which acts for the central administration in Great Britain, is already set up to deliver orders of StarOffice to interested government units.

VE: Venezuela's government is trying to shake off the yoke of at least one capitalist empire —Microsoft— by joining with socialist Cuba in a program to convert its computers to open-source "free" software. Both governments say they are trying to wean state agencies from using Microsoft. (15-09-2007)

.ZA: The South African Cabinet today announced that it had approved a free and open source strategy and that government would migrate its current software to free and open source software. At a Cabinet media briefing government said that it had "approved a policy and strategy for the implementation of free and open source software (FOSS) in government. In a statement the cabinet said "all new software developed for or by the government will be based on open standards and government will itself migrate current software to FOSS. This strategy will, among other things, lower administration costs and enhance local IT skills." (22-02-2007)

.00: