IBM and Novell's inking of contracts to formally become members of the NSW government's Linux and open source panel should finally start delivering some real competition in state procurement.

Originally by Commentary | ZDNet.com.au, 10:56 AM

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Anonymous Coward writes "Linux ought to be even more successful than it is. On ZDNet, Paul Murphy ponders the reasons why. For one thing: The GPL impedes Linux more than it helps. Licensing issues, coupled with patent and copyright FUD, have caused developers and VCs to think twice before committing to Linux.  Read more »

The New York Times has a piece about a report presented to the World Bank in which officials from 13 countries urge other nations to embrace open IT standards because they can provide "a vital step to accelerate economic growth, efficiency and innovation." The initiative was spearheaded by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. Among the 13 nations currently involved are Brazil, China, Denmark, India, Jordan and Thailand, and others.  Read more »

Massachusetts has proposed requiring that all state documents and presentations be output in Open Document format, a move that could lead state employees to largely abandon Microsoft Office.

Originally by WSJ.com: What's News Technology, 11:37 AM

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Lloyd's of London is close to offering independent insurance protection worldwide against potential IP litigation involving Linux and open source software. The financial services giant has agreed to take on the risk associated with open source, and is finalising arrangements to work through Open Source Risk Management ('OSRM') who will become Lloyd's sole US representative.

Originally by The Register - Software, 2:31 PM  Read more »

Lawrence Rosen, author of the Open Software License ('OSL'), has announced on the OSI's licence-discuss list a draft of version 3 of the OSL (pdf).  Read more »

‘The Central Scotland Police is removing Sun Microsystems Inc’s StarOffice productivity software from about 400 PCs and switching to Microsoft Corp’s Office System, citing lower maintenance costs and the need to interoperate more smoothly with other departments running Windows.  Read more »

In a clear admission that Linux poses a significant threat to Microsoft's corporate supremacy, a new anti-Linux campaign (which, confusingly, is titled "Get the Facts on Windows and Linux�) will do its best to extol the virtues of Microsoft software at the expense of the many free alternatives.

The three major issues on which the campaign focuses are HR costs, operation costs, and speed of development:  Read more »

Opte.org has recently completed an interesting project to map the TCP address layer of the internet. Some 4 294 967 296 (2³² for the non-savants) addresses exist, and the project has used some clever reduction techniques (and approximations) to reduce the relevant nodes by 8 orders of magnitude, allowing them to render the image in a mere 2 hours (as compared with several months using previous techniques)!  Read more »