Google already flagged MS France as malicious 2 years ago: http://gilouweb.com/bordel/google_truth.png (Ce site risque d'endommager votre ordinateur meaning: this website might harm your computer) So I guess it's only revenge ;)

Thought the same, and the obligatory xkcd reference: http://xkcd.com/619/ ;)

*Wooooosh*

I totally agree with your point of view. I think that there are many reasons our administrations should require opensource for their projects:

• there is a real public audit of the software, should it still be developped by a selected corporation
• money is not lost for private parties, as in, they are many things that could benefit other people, companies.. If it's the taxpayers' money, what can be more transparent to give it back this way to them?
• it lowers the risk of lock-ins for the administrations, that usually end by costing a lot more when you need to buy again a new solution 3 years later..

I think there is a lot to write & tell about how the many general reasons to endorse opensource could be adapted to the government / administration specifics, in terms of local economy growth, global service & quality improvement of software, ability to share more easily the load between cities/states/whatever and so on..

All of this is nit picking over the definition of the word 'right'. It has more than one meaning! Generally, the precise meaning is determined by who we are saying is 'giving' the right - and in the case of 'basic human rights' we usually imply that either 'the natural order of things' or $DEITY 'gave' the rights. All rights do not have to be innate though - I can contractually give you a right of access across my land. In the case of TFA we are talking about a government / constitutionally granted right. Ok? Can we all stop arguing semantics now? Kthx.

The article sounds indeed more like a rant made public about a problem. Of course, this doesn't deny there is problems with 9.10, but heh, it was in alpha/beta, as the others, and nothing really "that serious" was pointed out I think. Anyway, people ranting loudly enough to make it to The Register may learn that they can also participate in testing the releases..

As for my story, I was running 9.10 since alpha, and it went quite nicely.. Minor pulseaudio glitches that were solved over time and so on. At work and on my laptop, I've upgraded from Jaunty to Karmic when offered to do so by the update manager, and it went nicely too. No problem here, not even a dependency issue, it really went fine, and 2.6.31 is really nice to my setups ;)

About all this issue.. I can't help but think it's more a PR prank than a real spotted issue.. The bugtracker doesn't tell that "that many" users are impacted, and also, that it may be more due to a ATI-card weirdness.. Heh. Not ubuntu's fault in the end, even if they could have worked around it..

That one http://www.venganza.org/ ?

What about incentives like Niftyname, an opensource HaaS system made by a French ISP? Or oVirt, the virtualization system from RedHat? Given how the "cloud" is ready today, I'd say those things are far from being late.. Maybe they need more attention?

Neal 666 votes / 11%

There is something out there, told ya!