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[News] British Government Wakes Up to Realise There's Life Beyond Microsoft

  • Subject: [News] British Government Wakes Up to Realise There's Life Beyond Microsoft
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 12:52:28 +0000
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Organization: Netscape / schestowitz.com
  • User-agent: KNode/0.10.4
UK government still watching open source

,----[ Quote ]
| The UK government does not know how much open-source software it uses or what 
| its value is, ministers have admitted. 
| 
| [...]
| 
| Gillian Merron, minister for transformational government in the Cabinet 
| Office, said there were no targets to promote the use of open source software 
| such as the Linux operating system or the OpenOffice productivity 
| suite, "except where it is the most cost-effective way" of meeting government 
| needs.    
`----

http://www.techworld.com/applications/news/index.cfm?newsID=10498&pagtype=samechan


Related:

Lawmaker blasts U.K. government on Microsoft policy

,----[ Quote ]
| A member of Parliament of the United Kingdom has launched a stinging
| attack on the U.K. government's IT strategy, saying that it has given
| Microsoft too much control.
| 
| John Pugh, who is a member of Parliament, or MP, for Southport and a
| member of the Public Accounts Committee, was speaking in an
| adjournment debate on Tuesday that he had called. The aim of the
| debate, he said, was to explore the alternatives to using Microsoft
| software, including open source.
`----

http://www.news.com/Lawmaker-blasts-U.K.-government-on-Microsoft-policy/2100-1012_3-6212721.html
http://tinyurl.com/2ashm2


The trainwreck-waiting-to-happen that is UK government IT spending

,----[ Quote ]
| Think about that. Think about what this means: eight vendors have a 
| tremendous amount of leverage over the taxpayers of the United Kingdom. 
| 
| [...]
| 
| The UK, in other words, is a captive of its IT vendors. That is shockingly 
| wrong. 
`----

http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9777862-16.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=TheOpenRoad


BBC Corrupted

,----[ Quote ]
| Today the BBC made it official -- they have been corrupted by Microsoft. With 
| today's launch of the iPlayer, the BBC Trust has failed in its most basic of 
| duties and handed over to Microsoft sole control of the on-line distribution 
| of BBC programming. From today, you will need to own a Microsoft operating 
| system to view BBC programming on the web. This is akin to saying you must 
| own a Sony TV set to watch BBC TV. And you must accept the Digital  
| Restrictions Management (DRM) that the iPlayer imposes. You simply cannot be 
| allowed to be in control of your computer according to the BBC.      
`----

http://defectivebydesign.org/blog/BBCcorrupted


The [UK] politics of open source

,----[ Quote ]
| There's been a suggestion of a shift towards open source in the 
| houses of government in the UK recently, with the Conservative 
| Party promising to promote open source if elected and the incumbent 
| Labour Party releasing the code behind its new carbon footprint 
| calculator under the General Public License.
`----

http://www.businessreviewonline.com/os/archives/2007/07/the_politics_of.html


Lessig: Required Reading: the next 10 years

,----[ Quote ]
| Yet governments continue to push ahead with this idiot idea -- both Britain
| and Japan for example are considering extending existing terms. Why?
|
| The answer is a kind of corruption of the political process. Or better,
| a "corruption" of the political process. I don't mean corruption in the
| simple sense of bribery. I mean "corruption" in the sense that the
| system is so queered by the influence of money that it can't even get
| an issue as simple and clear as term extension right.
`----

http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003800.shtml#003800 


Governments slammed for anti-competitive software tendering practices     

,----[ Quote ]
| A leading Australian open source advocate has called for an end for to
| tender lock-outs of competitors to Microsoft, claiming the practice
| is costing Australian taxpayers tens of millions of dollars each
| year.
`----

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/11496/53/


Open-source evolves from 'nerdy' to notable

,----[ Quote ]
| Last January, Host Europe, a company that runs the Web sites for 120,000 
| businesses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, secured an unlikely supplier 
| for the open-source software it uses to run almost all of its computer 
| servers.   
|
| [...]
|
| "I think that the adoption of open source has been much greater in some 
| of the Continental markets and in the United States," said Mark Brier, 
| an open-source technician at the National Computing Center in 
| Manchester, England, a nonprofit group that advises government 
| on computer purchases. "Here there is no large-scale adoption."
| 
| Scott Thompson, the executive director of OpenAdvantage, a 
| nonprofit group in Birmingham, England, that promotes open-source 
| software among businesses in the West Midlands region, said the 
| spread has been limited by outmoded government procurement rules 
| that favor larger, established proprietary vendors, government 
| outsourcing of technology operations to companies with relationships 
| to proprietary vendors, and the well-funded defense of proprietary 
| software makers.
`----

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/03/technology/source02.php

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