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Armed with a One Laptop Per Child computer and kitted out in a Geek Freedom League t-shirt, South African deputy minister of science and technology, Derek Hanekom, opened Saturday's Software Freedom Day event at the departmental offices in Pretoria. On this note, he spoke of the importance of developing free software for the country's development, noting the difference between free as in costs nothing and free as in freedom to share and do with it what one wants without restrictions.

Google has proved unable to restrain itself from gloating over the ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) decision not to approve Microsoft's request that the OOXML specification be fast-tracked for approval. The search giant promptly fired off a blog entry slating both the specification and the way the application was handled.

In conjunction with Software Freedom Day, the Free and Open Source Software Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) has made a call for governments to purchase hardware that will not limit its choice of what software to run. The foundation, which promotes the use of free software and open source methods within Africa, said that during all the debates about FLOSS (free, libre and open source software) it was often forgotten that in many cases the hardware was locked into some proprietary operating system. The use of non-restricted hardware would benefit both governments and citizens, it argued.

Russia may have bowed out of the Cold War, but with the release of ALT Linux Personal Desktop 4.0, Russia has become a contender in the Linux arms race. Equipped with KDE 3.5.7, OpenOffice.org, Firefox, a modern infrastructure, and good multimedia support, ALT Linux is a potential weapon of mass adoption. ALT Linux is a Russian Linux distribution with several versions for differing needs. ALT Linux Ltd provides commercial support options for corporate customers, but also offers no-cost downloads of Personal Desktop for home and small office users. It is released under the Berne Convention for the Protecton of Literary and Artist Works, which reads very much like an open source license.

The topic for this month's Cape Town SPIN (Software Process Improvement Network) is Ruby on Rails. The guest speakers will be Farrel Lifson from Aimred and Gopal Ramasammy-Cook from Psybergate. Ruby on Rails is a full-stack open source framework for developing database-backed web-based applications, and it is built on the Ruby language.

A few weeks ago (Computerworld, August 20) I wrote about commercialising our national IP. The basic idea — and it was basic — was that there is a lot of clever development going on within government and that this should be captured and commercialised where appropriate. Recently, I noticed that a commentor on the New Zealand Open Source Society website took issue with the suggestion. “GrAnt05s” (sometimes I could hate the internet) argues that while my idea may have some immediate appeal, “it is likely to have some serious unintended consequences”.

Free software has been made mandatory for IT practicals of SSLC examination slated for March, 2008. The Director of Public Instruction (DPI) has issued orders making free software compulsory. It says Linux Operating System should be used for IT education in eighth, ninth and tenth standards. Till last year, schools had the freedom to conduct the examinations either in free software or in Microsoft platform.

LXer Feature: 17-Sep-2007

As I write this, I'm two weeks away from Ohio Linux Fest, a community event in Ohio focused upon Free Software.

I get to use Linux a lot these days. It's ingrained in my professional and personal life so much that it's easy to forget just how much territory the Free Software movement has gained. That realization made me aware that possibly we've taken a lot for granted.

The 19th of September Gnome 2.20 will be released. A few of the more interesting (IMHO) improvement offered by the new and shiny new release:A new version of Evolution, A new version of Epiphany, GNOME's image viewer, eog, is now faster and more stable, GNOME's Evince viewer, for PDF and Postscript files now supports interactive PDF forms, Support for right to left languages and plenty of new things for developers.

Standards don't rule the computing world. Today, ninety-two percent of desktops and now seventy percent of servers run the completely proprietary and non-standardized Microsoft Windows operating system. Even though POSIX was an ISO standard the weight of the market got behind the de-facto standard of Windows. Network effects matter. This historical record makes the recent global activities over the "Office Open XML" (OOXML) document format so interesting.

The official release date for OpenOffice.org 2.3.0 is September 17th, 2007 but has it already been released for the public. Yes it has and I’m really exited about it. This new version an be downloaded from several mirrors such as OSUOSL. Choose “OpenOffice.org-2.3.0″ as the distribution, your platform and language.

This laptop was meant for the people who need it the most. Those who are disadvantaged in the technological field could use this laptop as a means to grow and better themselves. I was reminded of a small snippet of information which made me at first chuckle then think. This snippet was that Microsoft was testing the laptop to see if windows would run on it. My first thought was HA! Here is an example where Open Source technology is clearly a better solution than Proprietary. Then a second and darker thought crossed my mind. Why is Microsoft testing the laptop?

Free and open source software (FOSS) is a better alternative to pirated software, a local open source advocate has said. "There is an alternative to pirated software. You don't need to pirate software to use good software. We often read raids of shops and businesses using illegal software. People want to use software, and FOSS is an alternative," said Dr. Giovanni Tapang, member of the Computer Professionals Union and Agham, an organization of Filipino scientists and engineers, in an interview last week.

In the past, ITWire has been less than flattering over Microsoft’s OpenXML document format. Make no mistake, an open file format is definitely a must-have. Nevertheless, it exists so let’s be pragmatic: OpenXML can greatly bridge the gap between Windows and Linux. In fact, it can open up whole new opportunities for Linux coders to produce documents in a Microsoft-friendly format.

There are many implications to be considered here. Let us begin with the fact that Novell has awoken the sleeping giant which is software patents. The deal gave credibility to an argument that Linux infringes on Microsoft patents and is therefore required to license Microsoft technologies. Another important issue is the exclusionary nature of the deal with Microsoft. Novell gains access to and develops various bits of software that other Linux distributors cannot have. This undermines the principles and spirit of Free software which — among several other things — thrives in collaboration and sharing. The relationship should be reciprocal in order for progress of Linux as a whole to be fast.

A European Union court upheld most of a landmark 2004 European Commission antitrust decision against Microsoft on Monday in a crucial victory for the European competition regulator against the U.S. software giant. The EU's Court of First Instance dismissed Microsoft's appeal on all substantive points but one.

Update: A more detailed story is available on Reuters UK.

[Not directly Linux related, but definately of interest here – Sander]

As recently reported on Slashdot, Apple, in its infinite wisdom, has added a checksum to the iPod database apparently to restrict non-iTunes products (like Amarok via libgpod) from having the ability to add music. To me this sounds pretty familiar. This is the same thing they did to iTunes 4.5 to make it harder for other apps to read off their DAAP shares, they changed it again in iTunes 7; open source apps are still unable to read iTunes 7 DAAP shares. But there's better news on this iPod front. The guys from #gtkpod reverse engineered the hashes.

[Site is being slashdotter and dugg, so may take a while to load – Sander]

We all know how far open source software has progressed, but has it come so far to not only challenge Windows, but replace it? Can you really install Linux and open source software in place of Windows, and want for nothing? In the first of this multi-part series we send in Ashton Mills to take on the challenge of using nothing but Linux and open source software... for absolutely everything. Will he find nirvana in the process, or lose all his hair in frustration? Follow him in and find out.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Continued work in Plasma, including a KMLDonkey data engine, a RSS data engine and news feed applet, and a Virtual Desktop switcher applet. More interface work for Amarok 2.0, with progress on alternate music service integration. Support for webseeding in KTorrent. Support for network access of colour palettes in KolourPaint. An Akonadi resource for the del.icio.us bookmarking service. CMake support for PyKDE4 applications. Wider logging support in KSystemLog. SVG caching optimises usage, resulting in speed gains in many applications. KTeaTime rewritten for KDE 4, KPlayer ported to KDE 4. New game based on "Deal or No Deal" arrives in playground/games. More code reorganisation in KDE SVN. KAider translation utility moves to kdereview.

Review of two of the most featured terminal emulators, for both Gnome and KDE. Multi-Gnome-Terminal and QuadKonsole, both of them let you open multiple terminal windows, on the same screen.