17 September 2007 - All government agencies must change to open source software, the national government says in an action plan presented today. Amsterdam is already testing such software and will decide on whether to renew its Microsoft contract in December.

http://www.nieuwsuitamsterdam.nl/English/2007/09/open_source.htm

The Swedish Standards Institute has overturned the controversial "yes" vote for Microsoft's OOXML "standard", after discovering that one the many attending Microsoft representatives had voted twice. Earlier it was revealed that Microsoft had bribed its so-called "Gold Partners" to attend and vote "yes", promising "extra marketing money" for those who subverted the process.

On the back of the recent WGA fiasco, further research has revealed yet another citation of what I already knew to be true: Windows updates itself without explicit permission, even if you turn off automatic updates.

NEW! ... Further proof, confirmation, and details of this has been provided by Scott Dunn of Windows Secrets, and Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet.

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Windows XP EULA in Plain English

This is the EULA for Windows XP Home Edition. EULA stands for “End-User Licensing Agreement.” Let's break that down:

• End-User – The person who purchased and is using Windows XP Home.
• Licensing – When someone buys Windows XP Home, they do not own anything. Instead they are licensing it from Microsoft.
• Agreement – A legally binding contract between the person and Microsoft.

What does this document contain? Most people don't know, because it is written in legal-speak. Still, you are expected to read it and are required to agree to it before using Windows XP Home. Even if you don't read it, you are still bound by it, so it's good to know what's in there.

Let's take a look at just what rights a user of Windows XP Home has given up. In the “What it Says” column we have reprinted the text exactly as it appears in the EULA (obtained from Microsoft's website at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/eula.mspx). In the “What it Means” column, we summarize what it means in plain English.

Despite earlier reassurances that Mono would never taint Fedora, it would seem that Mono has now poisoned the Fedora tree to a surprising extent. I can't say I'm very happy about Microsoft's patented, sour-grapes, anti-Java technology infiltrating a supposedly Free Community GNU/Linux distro in this way.

I’ve just completed an audit of Fedora Core 6, and this is the full list of mono dependants and sub-dependants, excluding doc, devel, debug, multi-arch and third-party repo packages:

avahi-sharp, banshee, beagle, beagle-evolution, beagle-gui, boo, bytefx-data-mysql, cowbell, daap-sharp, db4o, dbus-sharp, drapes, evolution-sharp, f-spot, gecko-sharp2, gmime-sharp, gnome-sharp, gsf-sharp, gtk-sharp, gtk-sharp2, gtk-sharp-gapi, gtksourceview-sharp, ibm-data-db2, ikvm, kerry, lat, mod_mono, mono-data, mono-data-firebird, mono-data-oracle, mono-data-postgresql, mono-data-sqlite, mono-data-sybase, mono-debugger, monodevelop, monodoc, mono-extras, mono-jscript, mono-locale-extras, mono-nunit, mono-web, mono-winforms, muine, nant, njb-sharp, tomboy, xsp.

Including mono-core itself, that makes a total of 48 packages.

Presumably Fedora 7 has the same number, or greater. I’ll do a similar audit on F7 later.