On the new IT News web site mnet.net.nz there is an article about Microsoft reaction to the new version of the SSC Legal Guidelines on open source. Brett Roberts of Microsoft says that the document does a good job of explaining the complex issues around licensing and indemnification.

In a major advance for interoperability and open standards, on 2 June 2006 the Danish Parliament adopted unanimously a decision that imposes on the government a duty to ensure before 1 January 2008 that the public sectors use of IT is based on open standards and that all digital information and data that the authorities exchange with citizens, companies and institutions, are available in formats that are based on open standards. The roadmap for implementing the decision is expected to be considered later this summer.

Dell says that Linux now makes up 25 percent of its enterprise market.

Excerpt:

"As part of Dell Service we have managed over 500 Unix to Linux migrations," Parker told ZDNet UK. "We see that growing, not shrinking, over time."

Linux is now "over a quarter of what we sell", said Parker.

Virtually all of the business has come from customer migrations from proprietary Unix environments, from companies such as IBM and Sun.

"We have been successful in helping customers convert from Unix," said Parker. "What those customers feel most comfortable with is what they view as an open source version of Unix. They feel comfortable with the capability and reliability of Linux."

The European Commission, which originally supported software patents has reversed its position, and now wants to exclude software from being patented. Last year the commission fased off against the European Council which opposed software patents. This is in stark contrast to the proposed New Zealand Patent Bill which not only does not exclude software, but also fails to address concerns over the ease which software patents are granted, leaving citizens to fight expensive legal battles even when prior art exists.

The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) has threatened to prosecute educational establishments who use improperly licensed software.

The pressure group, which lobbies on behalf of the proprietary software industry, has threatened to take headteachers, schools, and Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to court if they are found to have any unauthorised software.

see: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020396,39270906,00.htm

Today the State Services Commission released a new version of its Legal Guidelines for Open Source Software. This document was largely the result of a very productive cooperation between the NZOSS and the SSC after the publication of the first version of the document in March.

Good news from ISO/IEC. Apparently there is still a bit of paperwork to do to formalise the acceptance but the votes are all in and ODF is go!.

The ODF Alliance press release is here (pdf) and Andy Updegroves Standards Blog entry is here.

On Sunday the NZOSS held its first AGM over the Phone and using an online form of meeting called Internet Relay Chat (IRC). IRC is the oldest form of chat technology on the Internet, predating services such as ICQ and MSN. This allowed members who were not in the main centres to attend the meeting on the same basis as other members.

The subtitle of the article is "Open standards, free software, and old documents", which isn't nearly as eycatching...

The message and style of delivery is a good one for those of you interested in advocacy. Very subtle but with some very good insights. Read it and add it to your repertoire.

In February the Patent Office accepted a patent application from Microsoft patenting load balancing based on communicating about load between servers. The patent basically deals with the concept of having the load balancer server talk to the other servers to work out which one is best to give new data to. The patent dates from June 2003 where it was filed in the United States. It wasn't until a year later, in May 2004 that it was filed in New Zealand.