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Tomorrow is Britain's nationwide "Convention on Modern Liberty"
,----[ Quote ]
| Tomorrow marks the first ever British Convention on Modern Liberty,
| co-sponsored by The Guardian, OpenDemocracy, and Liberty. It's a daylong,
| nationwide forum on the erosion of liberty, privacy and civil rights in
| Britain. Boing Boing is a proud sponsor of the event, and I'll be speaking at
| the closing plenary with Billy Bragg tomorrow afternoon in London.
`----
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/27/tomorrow-is-britains.html
British 'careless' with liberties
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7915479.stm
Recent:
The great British open-source arms race
,----[ Quote ]
| Politicians of all stripes seem to be espousing open source, but that bluster
| must be turned into action — and soon, says Mark Taylor.
|
| First, shadow chancellor George Osborne advocates open source. Now minister
| for digital engagement Tom Watson promises to use more open-source software,
| if circumstances permit. The UK public sector just got interesting again.
`----
http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/comment/0,1000002985,39619198,00.htm
Geekfun: Recovery.gov May Be Just The Beginning for Open Source in Federal IT
,----[ Quote ]
| Techmeme wasn’t exactly buzzing with the news that the new Recovery.gov
| website, which provides information on federal recovery programs, was built
| using the open source Drupal community content management system. It made
| it on to Techmeme, but just barely; only one of the linked sites noted the
| Drupal connection, the others, including some prominent tech news sites, were
| only covering the launch of the site.
`----
http://www.newsfactor.com/blog_article.php?aid=1982976
Related:
Newham has a cow over Microsoft MOU
,----[ Quote
| However, Newham has supplied the INQUIRER with internal studies that it says
| do demonstrate that its decision to commit to Microsoft was justified. The
| studies were performed by Socitm, a private public sector consulting firm of
| which Newham COI Steele is a vice president. the INQUIRER will report on
| these findings in due course.
|
| Meanwhile, the original MOU is enlightening. As well as claiming the deal
| would enable Newham to achieve high rankings in Audit Commission assessments,
| it committed Newham to moving all "competitive technology" to Microsoft,
| regardless of the feasibility of such a move.
|
| It also required Steele to promote Microsoft software.
|
| See attached file: Memorandum of Understanding.doc
`----
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/21/microsoft-newham-council-goes
Is This the Season of Porcine Aerobatics?
,----[ Quote ]
| Two of the darkest moments for open source in the UK involved the loss of
| major public projects. The first was Newham Borough Council, which ran a
| high-profile trial of open source only to ditch it at the last moment, after
| magically receiving an offer it couldn't refuse from Microsoft – which cynics
| suggested was the main motivation for the open source exercise in the first
| place.
|
| This was bad news for free software, because it enabled Microsoft to do two
| things. First, it could claim that an independent body had tried open source
| and found it wanting, and secondly, it was able to use Newham as a showcase
| for its public sector technology.
|
| In some ways, the second defeat was even worse. It involved a massive
| contract with the NHS that was far-reaching in scope...
`----
http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/blogs/index.cfm?blogid=14&entryid=728
Government faces crunch on Microsoft mega-deal
,----[ Quote ]
| Rumour has it that Microsoft hasn't been feeling appreciated in the public
| sector, thinking its customers don't know what a good deal they've been
| getting since the MOU was first negotiated in 2002. BECTA, the procurement
| quango for the education sector, has recommended schools don't upgrade to
| Microsoft Vista and Office 2007.
|
| [...]
|
| "There's a big anti-Microsoft lobby growing on the green agenda" he said,
| especially among local councils who were beginning to realise that PC's were
| power hungry and expensive to maintain. They were taking interest in
| think-client computers instead.
`----
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/15/uk-gov-faces-crunch-microsoft
UK: Major cost reduction result of Bristol's switch to Open Standards
,----[ Quote ]
| Bristol City Council's switch to StarOffice in 2005 has led to a major
| reduction of IT costs, says Gavin Beckett, the council's ICT Strategy
| manager.
|
| StarOffice is Sun Microsystems' proprietary suite of office applications,
| which is based on the Open Source OpenOffice. In 2006 Bristol took the
| further step of adopting the ISO-approved Open Document Format (ODF).
|
| Speaking at a conference on ODF in the Netherlands last month, Beckett said
| that implementing StarOffice for 5,500 desktops in Bristol saved 1.1 million
| GBP (1.4 million euro) in comparison to the total cost of implementing
| Microsoft Office. "The licences for StarOffice cost us 186,000 GBP (243,000
| euro), in comparison to 1.4 million GBP (1.8 million euro) for MS Office."
|
| These major savings were offset slightly by extra time needed for
| implementing StarOffice. Implementation cost the city council 484,000 GBP
| (632,000 euro), double the estimate for MS Office. This was due to document
| conversion and training, said the IT Strategy manager. Explaining and
| troubleshooting the new office applications took several months more than
| planned.
`----
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7409
Is Becta loosening Microsoft's grip on UK schools?
,----[ Quote ]
| Capita-SIMS, the powerful and dominant schools database provider, has been
| instructed by Becta to comply with the new interoperability framework. This
| move potentially opens up a large and growing market to solutions based on
| Open Source databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL.
|
| [...]
|
| Moving away from Microsoft SQL
|
| The school database market has been a closed shop for many years. Products
| from Capita and Serco, both based on MS-SQL, account for well over 90% of
| market share. In the case of Capita-SIMS.net, not only does it use Microsoft
| SQL , requires schools to use MS Office 2003 and has a MS IIS web server but
| it also has a non-interoperable API.
`----
http://www.siriusit.co.uk/myblog/is-becta-loosening-microsofts-grip-on-uk-schools.html
Interview: Tim Pearson, CEO at RM plc on interoperability and software patents
,----[ Quote ]
| John Spencer talks to Tim Pearson Chief Executive of RM. RM is the largest
| most successful supplier of ICT to the UK education market and, for good
| measure, is British too. Tim has been there from the start and so is really
| now Mr RM. This autumn he gave the school ICT world a jolt when RM announced
| its Asus miniBook. It retails to schools for only £169 and runs Open Source
| software throughout. The miniBook has preceded an avalanche of new products
| and new thinking.
|
| [...]
|
| More seriously, it's been hard to forecast when we have no real experience
| selling at this price point before, neither have we ever sold a machine with
| a Linux-based client OS before.
`----
http://www.siriusit.co.uk/myblog/is-becta-loosening-microsofts-grip-on-uk-schools.html
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
Interview with Richard M. Stallman
,----[ Quote ]
| It is important to know this because we will always face pressure, from those
| who are powerful and would like to take away our freedom, to surrender our
| freedom—and they frequently offer us something attractive in exchange. For
| instance, B’liar wanted to abolish the Rights of Englishmen, and to serve his
| American master, Bush, faithfully; so he offered Britons “protection” from
| this or that, plus the imagined idea that he influences his master on their
| behalf through the “special relationship”.
`----
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/interview_with_richard_stallman
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