20090701 More Support for Free Software in the German Government
From s5h.net
DE: Government reinforces open source resource centre
Germany's federal Agency for Information Technology (BIT) is increasing its open source support to public administrations, according to representative attending the Linuxtag conference in Berlin last week. BIT's now employs a team of consultants and technicians specialised in open source, that will offer assistance to public administrations. The renewal of the competence centre is one of the measures taken by the federal government to prop up the country's economy. During the conference BIT's colleagues from the federal Office for IT security (BSI), part of the ministry of the Interior, presented the most recent version of Kolab, an open source collaboration suite for Unix platforms.
http://www.osor.eu/news/de-government-reinforces-open-source-resource-centre
Related: Three German KDE Deployments
The IT Service Center Berlin has announced the development of a desktop system for the public services in Germany's capital (Google Translate to English). This is yet another public body making the switch to the Free Desktop system
http://dot.kde.org/1212516937/
[German] Federal Employment Office switches to Linux http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/102218
German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) Deploys StarOffice
According to this German article, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) is switching to StarOffice for all 500 desktop PCs. 90% of the BSI employees have already gone through the migration. Another great success story for ODF!
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/german_federal_office_for_information
DE: One fifth of Freiburg city council migrated to OpenOffice
In the German city of Freiburg, four hundred of the two thousand PCs used by the city council are now running OpenOffice. The migration to the Open Source suite of office applications is a intermediate goal, saving the city up to half a million euro in licence costs. The city's final aim is to switch to an Open Source desktop. The council began its office application migration last July, when it decided to use the ISO-approved Open Document Format (ODF) as a document standard.
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7538
Ubuntu landed on Berlin metro system
The guys from “Berliner Fenster”, a company responsible for the content of the television system installed inside underground vehicles (more than 3.700 displays) were so kind (thank you!) providing us with a spot for our release party this Saturday for free. So just on time with the release starting from today there are small spots viewable by an audience of about 1.5 million people per day according to their web site.
http://www.screenage.de/blog/2008/04/24/ubuntu-landed-on-berlin-metro-system/
DE: German Foreign Ministry will not use ISO OOXML
In the weeks prior to the second round of votes last September, irregularities were reported in the standard committees in many participating countries. These claims continued until after the final discussion, in February and March this year. The European Commission has started an investigation into the allegations. The Commission sent a letter to all EU national standards committees in Europe, requesting information about the process. Sources at the Commission declined to comment, as the investigation is on-going and no official position has yet been adopted.
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7561
199 Euro laptop with OpenOffice.org pre-installed
I just found about this offer in Germany. A vendor called "one" is selling a low-cost laptop with Linux and OpenOffice.org pre-installed for 199 Euro. This special offer lasts until May 12th according to the website. Cool to see more and more hardware vendors bundle OpenOffice.org!
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/199_euro_laptop_with_openoffice
City of Munich and German Federal Foreign Office start collaboration
According to this German article, the City of Munich and the German Federal Foreign Office have started to collaborate on the implementation of their open source and open standards strategies. I would not be surprised if other organizations decided to join the "alliance" as well. Anyway, very cool to see government organizations collaborate regarding the usage of open source and open standards.
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