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My interest here isn't in what Microsoft and the EU agree to as an appropriate remedy for Microsoft's market dominance in web browsers or past legal transgressions. My interest is in ensuring an increase in the global competition in operating system platforms. In short, unbundle IE in Europe? Why stop there? Why not unbundle the whole of Windows from all OEM PCs shipped in Europe?

One of the overlooked advantages that Open Source development affords, is that it imitates perhaps the most fruitful and beneficial of all human endeavours: Science. How has the scientific-method evolved, and what can it teach us about the future possibilities of software construction?

Anthony Rumble, one of Australia's long-time supporters of Linux and free software, died on the weekend. The announcement, made on the Sydney Linux Users Group mailing list, indicated that the death was sudden, caused by a regular household accident.

While the rest of the world is shying away from Windows Vista and looking to deploy Linux across schools, the Victorian State Government in Australia is behaving like Microsoft's patsy by side-stepping competition and adopting Vista in schools, according to a leading local IT consultant.

You may not be aware of this, but you’re probably reading this editorial using a product sourced from perhaps the world’s largest monopoly market. A monopoly more profound and more ingrained than any run by a former government telco or a gilded-age robber-baron. The market? Personal computer platforms. The product? Microsoft’s Windows.

The following are the key arguments they introduce against the unbundling of Microsoft Windows from consumer PCs, along with an explanation as to why these arguments from the 'unbundling sceptics' are invalid:

In order to broaden the availability of open source professional services software, this visual guide shows you how to install Apache, MySQL, PHP and allocPSA on Windows.

Microsoft addicted many of the first billion users to its proprietary platform using the ruse of encouraging software piracy in developing nations. Now the software giant intends to hook the next billion users by providing a cheap hit of $3 software. These are the claims of a longstanding open source advocate, who has started a campaign urging third world governments to reject Microsoft's offer of cheap software.

The Queensland, Victorian, South Australian and Federal Governments, all exclusive Microsoft sites, were noticeably absent of any representation at the Government Day seminar at the inaugural LinuxWorld Expo held in Sydney in 2006.

Modern businesses are quickly recognizing the need to make intelligent use of information throughout the organization to better address support issues and other business problems. An open source professional services automation solution can help track and manage customer requests, problems, complaints, tasks and any other projects that need to be tracked, along with the billing and expenses related to those activities.

Professional Services Automation solution, allocPSA, has been released as open source software under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL), allowing businesses to obtain and modify the source code free of charge.

On Sunday May 7, 2006, John Naughon of The Observer wrote a piece titled A problem too jumbo-sized for Bill Gates to solve?. In general, this was quite positive towards open source software, however there were a few points where John didn't fully appreciate or understand the the key differences between the Microsoft approach towards developing software, and the open source approach. What follows is an email I sent to John clarifying a few of these differences.

The Age newspaper's IT section had a front-page article discussing a letter sent by a group of women researchers to Bill Gates about Microsoft's 2020 Science Group programme. In essence, the women were raising the issue that no women researchers were included in that group. I decided to write my own letter in response to some of these women researchers, pointing out that there may be better ways to harness womens' research energies towards a better world in 2020, than by aligning themselves to Microsoft.

I recently read a piece by Christopher Koch in CIO magazine. It highlighted, to me, how far many in senior IT management positions have to go before they truly understand the benefits that the freedom inherent in open source software delivers to them. What follows is my email to Christopher outlining some of the business outcomes and advantages of such freedoms.