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Microsoft's latest attack on Linux, in which its chief executive Steve Ballmer repeated the key themes of Microsoft's "Get The Facts" campaign, has evoked a strong response from Novell which accuses the software giant of of selectively using biased reports to back up its claims. In the email sent to Microsoft customers and partners on Wednesday, Ballmer claimed that Windows was a better choice than Linux in terms of security, training, total cost of ownership (TCO) and protection against legal action over patent violations.

Stuart Cohen, the chief executive officer of OSDL, told ZDNet UK on Tuesday that the organisation is currently working on an open-source database which could be used by companies or patent employees to check for prior art -- whether a patent application contains original work, or has already been worked on in the open-source community. But campaigners against software patents said this would have little impact and does not tackle the essential issue that patents stifle innovation.

The planned migration of 14,000 desktops in the City of Munich to Linux has attracted attention from as far away as Japan and Australia - and so far all they've switched over is the browser. Peter Hofmann, the project leader of the Linux migration in the City of Munich, code-named LiMux, told ZDNet UK on Tuesday what it feels like to become a star in the Linux world.

MySQL will release the production version of MySQL 4.1 on Wednesday. The open-source database is edging closer to parity with commercial databases with functionality such as binary prepared statements.

Maybe the browser wars really are back. Bart Decrem, the marketing contact for the Mozilla Foundation, told ZDNet UK on Friday that he expects the browser's market share to reach 10 percent by the end of 2005. "I think we'll get to 10 percent over the next year. We don't have 10 percent of the Web at the moment, but we have the momentum," claimed Decrem.

A bug in version 2.6 of the Linux kernel allows remote users to crash systems running SuSE's latest enterprise and consumer software

Firefox hoped to raise enough money from donations to pay for an ad in The New York Times. Now it has more than enough. The campaign started on Tuesday with the goal of getting 2,500 people to donate $30 or more to the marketing fund within ten days, with the aim of placing a full page ad in The New York Times.

Bristol City Council may move up to 5,000 of its desktop computers to StarOffice next year. The move could save an estimated £1.4m over five years, a council spokeswoman said on Friday.

The four main political parties in Germany are supporting the fight against European software patents. The German Parliament will on Thursday discuss a proposal put forward by the main opposition party that demands changes to the EU Council's proposal on software patents.

The Defense Ministry of Singapore has decided to switch from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org, a move which could involve 20,000 PCs, according to reports. With the ministry operating around 20,000 PCs, the decision to move to open-source software on the desktop is among the biggest by any government agency.

Trusted Computer Solutions, which supplies secure applications to organisations such as the FBI, has built a secure version of Linux due for release in Spring 2005. It is currently beta testing the product, Trusted Linux, which will provide its customers with an alternative to Trusted Solaris to run its product line.

Metrowerks, a provider of products for embedded developers, on Monday introduced Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), which will allow automotive companies to create navigation, hands-free phone and infotainment systems based on a customised version of the open-source operating system. The company made changes to the Linux kernel, drivers and boot sequence to enhance its real-time capabilities, reduce power consumption and speed up boot time.

JBoss on Monday released jBPM 2.0, an open-source workflow engine, which it developed in collaboration with the open-source project of the same name. Sacha Labourey, European general manager at JBoss, said this is the next stage in the company's strategy to build a full open-source middleware stack.

Red Hat has launched a programme to support embedded deployments of its Enterprise Linux product. This is the latest move in the company's turn-around over embedded Linux: earlier this year it announced a deal with Wind River, a vendor of embedded software, to jointly develop an embedded variant of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The Hebrew and Arabic OpenOffice.org teams have cooperated on local versions of the open-source productivity application, which celebrated its fourth birthday on Wednesday. Similarities between the Arabic and Hebrew languages have enabled groups of Israeli and Arab developers to assist each other in solving common problems developing local versions of OpenOffice.org software.