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Government

Submission + - How to Hijack an EU Open Source Strategy Paper (linuxjournal.com)

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "Thanks to the indispensable Wikileaks, we have the opportunity to see how an organisation close to Microsoft is attempting to re-write — and hijack — an important European Union open source strategy paper, currently being drawn up. Analysing before and after versions visible in the document demonstrates how the Association for Competitive Technology is trying to widen the scope of open source to include "mixed solutions blending open and proprietary code.""
Microsoft

Submission + - Has Microsoft's Patent War Against Linux Begun? (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "Microsoft has filed a suit against TomTom, "alleging that the in-car navigation company's devices violate eight of its patents — including three that relate to TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel." What's interesting is that the intellectual property lawyer behind the move, Horacio Gutierrez, has just been promoted to the rank of corporate vice president at Microsoft. Is this his way of announcing that he intends going on the attack against Linux?"
Software

Submission + - The Chinese (Web Servers) Are Coming (netcraft.com)

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "The February 2009 Netcraft survey is not the usual "Apache continues to trounce Microsoft IIS" story: there's a new entrant — from China. "This majority of this month's growth is down to the appearance of 20 million Chinese sites served by QZHTTP. This web server is used by QQ to serve millions of Qzone sites beneath the qq.com domain." What exactly is this QZHTTP, and what does it all mean for the world of Web servers?"
Government

Submission + - EU: MS Must Offer Competitors' Browsers: Now What? (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "So the European Commission is going to require Microsoft to offer competitors' browsers with Windows. But having the option to install Firefox, say, is useless unless people know what it is. The implication is that we need some kind of campaign to ensure that people understand the choices they will have. How can open source best exploit this latest EU decision?"
Red Hat Software

Submission + - Fedora as Basis of Russia's Operating System? (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "Last month, a story about Russia producing its own national operating system based on GNU/Linux started circulating. Now there's some confirmation, and details of how the plan might be put into practice. Red Hat had a meeting with the Russian communications ministry, which announced that the development of free software in Russia was one of its priorities. One concrete idea they talked about was using the Russian Fedora project as a step towards creating a national operating system."
Security

Submission + - Could This be the Solution to Spam? (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "Apparently, the U.S. Department of Justice has been sending out hoax emails to test the security awareness of its staff. How about applying a similar strategy to tackling spam among ordinary users? If fake spam messages offering all the usual benefits, and employing all the usual tricks, were sent out by national security agencies around the world, it would select precisely the people who tend to respond to spam. The agencies could then contact them from a suitably important-looking government address, warning about what could have happened. Some might become more cautious as a result, others will not. But again, it is precisely the latter who are more likely to respond to further fake spam messages in the future, allowing the process to be repeated as often as necessary. The system would be cheap to run — spam is very efficient — and could use the latest spam as templates."
Windows

Submission + - Russia to Create "National OS" Rival to Wi (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "Russia's President Medvedev is being asked to fund the creation of a "National OS", based on GNU/Linux. The idea is to reduce Russia's dependency on Western software — both proprietary and free — by developing an operating system that is completely under its control. Strangely, the head of Microsoft Russia is against the idea."
Censorship

Submission + - Czech EU Presidency a Disaster for the Internet? (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "The first details of the tech priorities of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union have emerged — and they don't look good. As well as "protecting" intellectual monopolies, the Czechs want to push through the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), build on the efforts of the preceding French Presidency (such as "Three Strikes and You're Out") and — of course — shield children from "illegal" content online. Could this be the worst EU presidency for the Internet so far?"

Comment Re:Russian translation? (Score 1) 271

by Glyn Moody (#25484991) Attached to: Russia Mandates Free Software For Public Schools
I read Russian up to a certain point, but gave the Google Translate version so as not to impose any of my own misunderstandings. This is part of a larger story about Russia moving to free (as in freedom) software in its schools. I gave a link in the article to an earlier post I'd written, with more information. That, in turn, linked to some good background details elsewhere. It's not just about budget-cutting.
Software

Submission + - Whatever Happened to Eric Raymond? (linuxjournal.com)

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "Once the the unofficial voice of open source, Eric Raymond has been pretty silent for the last few years. I asked him why, and for his thoughts on open source past, present and future. As well as telling me about the reasons for stealth mode, his biggest surprise in the ten years since the publication of Cathedral and the Bazaar, and why World Domination would be a "damned near-run thing either way", he also explained how the open source way can solve climate change, sea acidification, water shortages and resource depletion. Time for ESR to un-stealth?"
Google

Submission + - Microsoft's Biggest Threat: Google? OSS? Both? (redmondmag.com)

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "Google always plays down suggestions that there's any looming clash of the titans between itself and Microsoft. Meanwhile, it is pushing open source in every way it can: directly, by contributing code to projects and employing top hackers like Andrew Morton, Jeremy Allison and Guido van Rossum, and indirectly through the $60 million fees it pays Mozilla, its Summer of Code scheme and various open source summits held at its offices. Google+OSS: could this be the killer combination that finally breaks Microsoft?"
Education

Submission + - Scientist must pay to read his own CC'd paper (cam.ac.uk)

Submitted by
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: "Peter Murray Rust, a chemist at Cambridge University, was lost for words when he found Oxford University Press's website demanded $48 from him to access his own scientific paper, in which he holds copyright and which he released under a Creative Commons licence. As he writes, the journal in question was "selling my intellectual property, without my permission, against the terms of the licence (no commercial use)." In the light of this kind of copyright abuse and of the PRISM Coalition, a new FUD group set up by scientific publishers to discredit open access, isn't it time to say enough is enough, and demand free access to the research we pay for through our taxes?"

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