FLOSS news

From Schoolforge-UK

These are hand-selected news items. There is also a page showing a selection of RSS news feeds.

Note

Please send news articles by email to News Admin. Note that not all articles may be posted, and articles may be edited. Wherever possible, please provide links. Click here for news items prior to May-08.

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3 Jul 08	Richard Stallman writes in the Beeb - "Gates may be gone, but the walls and bars of proprietary software he helped create remain, for now. Dismantling them is up to us".
19 Jun 08	UKUUG appeals the initial court decision on BSI's OOXML action - The High Court has rejected the UKUUG's application for a Judicial Review of BSI's actions in voting 'yes' to the fast-tracking of DIS29500 (OOXML), and the case will now be heard in open court. You can support UKUUG by joining or making a donation.
16 Jun 08	Next release of the OpenDisc delayed to include Firefox 3 - The CD collection of the best of Open Source is being held until next week so it can include new features in Firefox 3. Firefox 3 is available from 17 June and Mozilla are attempting to set a world record for downloads.
3 Jun 08	Munich Makes Good - Glyn Moody reports in Computerworld how well things are progressing with the City of Munich's transition to FLOSS.
3 Jun 08	Universities publish lecture materials via iTunes - Three universities publish audio and video lectures on the non-charging section of iTunes.
23 May 08	ISO Appeal: South Africa Rises to the Challenge - The South African national standards body has appealed against the result of the OOXML DIS 29500 ballot in ISO. Norway and UKUUG are also working on it. 3 Jun Update: Further appeals from Brazil and India and a protest from Venezuela
22 May 08	Microsoft announces support for ODF file format - Office 2007 Service Pack 2, due in 2009, will support OpenDocument Format v1.1. Details of the announcement are examined in Andy Updegrove's blog. So why aren't we all shouting "hooray"? See Groklaw, ODF Alliance and the EU Commission
21 May 08	At least three responses to Becta's School Open Source Project - Sirius Corporation, The Learning Machine and OSS Watch don't deny they have put in bids.
21 May 08	Design revamp for $100 laptop - It's actually going to be $75, looks like an e-book folded in the middle but doesn't say what OS it's using. And Get-One-Give-One is coming soon to Europe.
19 May 08	SugarLabs reinvents how computers can be used for education - Following the news that OLPC will become yet another Windows XP laptop, SugarLabs has been set up to expand the scope of the OLPC's original Open Source GUI.
17 May 08	OpenEducationDisc 8.05 released - The best of educational Open Source for Windows on this version of the OpenDisc CD. There's also a distribution pack so you can give it to all your colleagues and friends.
17 May 08	Open Source and the Benefits of Education - Leo Max Pollak argues the case for all British Universities to publish their courseware online, as presently done by MIT's OpenCourseWare and the Open University's OpenLearn programmes.
13 May 08	Becta refers its interoperability complaint to the European Commission - Following discussions with the Office of Fair Trading, Becta has now referred its 2007 interoperability complaint to the European Commission in support of the Commission's wider investigation.
5 May 08	Becta invites tenders for Open Source Schools Project - Becta are commissioning a project to develop and support a community of schools using open source products. Rather like Schoolforge-UK, actually.