Digital Rights Network

Open source academy has
a story about Bristol City Council's switch to Star Office from Microsoft Office which it is estimated will save the council 60%. One of the key reasons for the switch along with the the lower total cost of ownership (TCO) was the desire to increase flexibility and avoid vendor lock-in in the long run:

Bristol City Council is set to save 60 per cent on software costs over five years following its decision to switch from Microsoft Office to Sun's StarOffice.

Lloyd's of London, the insurance market, has said that it will underwrite insurance provided by Open Source Risk Management to companies worried that their use of open source software might make them vulnerable to claims of patent infringement.

LinuxWorld Conference & Expo will take place over two days, 5th and 6th October at the Olympia Exhibition Centre in London, UK.

Thanks to generous sponsorship space is available once again, FREE of charge, in the .Org Village for Linux projects, groups and campaigns.

Sadly space is limited at the Expo. However unlike other LinuxWorld Expo's we do not allocate space on a first come first served basis or based on the percieved size of you .Org.

Submissions are welcome up until the 1st August. At that time we will announce which entrants have been accepted. Whilst some priority will be made to UK based .Orgs the size of your Org will not be either a benefit or hindrance. Some space will be reserved specifially for small or new Orgs.

The Norwegian government is taking large steps in their software policy: everybody in the public sector has to develop a plan for use of open source solutions within 2006. The Norwegian Minister of Modernization, Morton A. Meyer, presented new plan for information technology in Norway called “eNorge – the digital leap", where one of the points concerned open standards and open source. The details are not yet finalized, but the plan stipulate these objectives for standardization and open source:

Viennese authorities are allowing users of the city's governmental PCs to choose between Open Source or proprietary software. The case is usually heard from advocates on one or other side of the debate; now end-users get to have their say. They can choose between continuing to run Word on Windows, running Open Office on the same platform, or switching to open platform and application. IT staff are offering free installations for any switches, and they will charge departments lower maintenance costs if they run open software. The lines are drawn. Read more

A POST (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology) note is being prepared on open source. You should send submissions by end of October to:

David Berry, Adviser
Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
Houses of Parliament
7 Millbank, London, SW1P 3JA, UK
email berryd@parliament.uk
POST's web site: www.parliament.uk/post 

---------------
Scope Document:

September 2004
OPEN SOURCE

Rationale

Open source is collaboratively produced software
developed by online volunteers who release it on the
Internet to be freely used, modified and distributed. Open