Lack of license fee draws UK firms to open source
,----[ Quote ]
| Almost half (48%) of UK financial services and public sector organizations
| already use open source software, according to research by business
| intelligence firm Actuate.
`----
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=988E0D14-C37E-49AF-951C-F0E1D26468FA
Related:
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
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
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
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
|
|
