Foreign tyrant back in Italy
The Italian city of Pontedera has just installed 45 new PCs running open source in computer labs in three schools. Teachers are being instructed how to use the GNU/Linux based systems, according to a report on the website of Radio Nostalgia. It quotes analyst Stefano Tognarelli: "Our goal is to increase the use of open source software by young people and by public administrations."
“It typically ascends to a tier of corruptible politicians...”An informant of ours wanted to draw readers' attention to universities in Italy. "Microsoft helped them with millions," he said, "[in order] to help [the] Italian government open 2-3 Microsoft research centers in some universities. The most part will be paid by the government by the way [and] the code won't be open."
Further to this, we were told that, "apparently, in Piemonte they promised to make code public. In Trento we're are still waiting for an answer, that won't come."
Given that the code is written using taxpayers' money, i.e. public subsidies, this makes little or no sense.
Moreover, "they don't only retain the copyright on the code. Patents allow them to annoy you even if you re-write from scratch," says the informant.
Corporations must not taint public institutions like academia, but they increasingly do. Microsoft is a major culprit in that respect.
The University of Trento is one to be named and possibly shamed for this. Their site does not run Windows, so it's definitely not a 'Microsoft shop' (well, not yet). But there are apparently at least 3 centers in 3 regions apart from the one in Trento. "There are nice links departing from that article," we are told, but it's not in English.
Since articles of value and substance are difficult for a non-Italian speaker to understand (even with an automated translation), this one reader of ours provided a translation, as follows:
“...Microsoft uses its monopoly to elevate the prices as much as the market can bear”As many people are probably aware, Microsoft's software products are hugely expensive in Holland and in other part of Europe where Microsoft uses its monopoly to elevate the prices as much as the market can bear. Explanations from Microsoft UK were far from satisfactory. They found excuses, trying to place blame on local GDP, which is not only absurd but also incorrect.
Also in the news at the moment is this latest Portuguese government concession to Microsoft (yes, yet another [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]). According to this article (English), they permit themselves to get locked in without exploring better alternatives which the government has control over. The gist of it (thanks to Tony Manco): "The Institute of Employment and Vocational Training of Portugal will pay, by 2011, more than three million for 3700 licences to Microsoft, according to the authorization published yesterday in the Daily Republic." ⬆
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[1] Europe's schools remain shy about open source
The Italian city of Pontedera has just installed 45 new PCs running open source in computer labs in three schools. Teachers are being instructed how to use the GNU/Linux based systems, according to a report on the website of Radio Nostalgia. It quotes analyst Stefano Tognarelli: "Our goal is to increase the use of open source software by young people and by public administrations."
Region Calabria, one of the largest regions in all of Italy with more than 2 million people, today announced that it has gone live with a new IBM information infrastructure of servers and storage as a means to transform its data processing center.
Linux Day 2008 - ILS, the Italian Linux Association today runs its eighth annual Linux Day all over Italy, in 119 cities. Enjoy!
In occasion of the Linux Day 2008, that will take place on Saturday in 119 Italian cities, the Italian Linux Society and the Italian OpenOffice.org Association are launching a campaign for a special endangered specie.
The University of Perugia is offering a master course on Open Source. "Software developers and IT policy makers need to understand the importance and potential of this type of software and how to combine it with proprietary IT systems."
The 'Master di I€° Livello in Sistemi e Tecnologie Free Libre Open Source per la Società dell'Informazione e della Comunicazione' (First level master in Open Source systems and technology for the Information Society) was presented during a seminar on Open Source in the city of Orvieto, on 13 September.
In July 2007 the IT department of the Italian Parliament presented plans for the migration of 200 servers and more than 3,500 desktop PCs to Linux and OpenOffice. The migration was due to begin in September and take two years.
Regional government projects include Cremona, Foggia, Rome, Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, Genoa, Bologna, Balzano, Savona, Umbria, and Tuscany again.
More details are available of Rome’s open source policy, Genova’s OpenOffice trials, Bologna’s open source projects, and Bolzano’s FUSS project.
According to Davide Dozza, Chairman of Associazione PLIO: "The numbers are exactly the same. If it's just a coincidence, it's a very strange one. Downloads of the Italian version of OpenOffice.org were 800.000 in 2006 and 1.800.000 in 2007: the difference is exactly in the million of Italians that - according to Microsoft - have downloaded the trial version of Office 2007. We think that these users have decided to switch to OpenOffice.org as soon as they have realized that the effort to get used to the new ribbon interface is higher than the effort to migrate to the open source suite. In 2007, the majority of information requests has been about the compatibility with Windows Vista, and the trend stays unchanged in 2008".
Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that the Italian Ministry of Justice has selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the platform for its web-based Civil Justice applications, including those used for general cognizance, for civil execution and for the offices of the Small Claims courts.
An assistent of Italian MEP Marco Cappato (ALDE) contacted us with the news that an answer to a parliament question has arrived.
In this video an Italian TV program, NeaPòlis, talks about ubuntu as a very stable, high performance and easy to install operative system.
For Microsoft, Telecom Italia's decision is clearly a blow.
The Chamber of Commerce of Ferrara, the first PloneGov Italian member, invites 100 representatives from the public sector and open source experts to participate to the official launch of PloneGov in Italy on September 16, 2008.
As reported by the Italian newspaper Repubblica on July 10th, 2007, a plan suggested by the left deputies Pietro Folena and Franco Grillini to migrate all the computers of the Parliament from Windows to Linux was approved by the Chamber.
The migration will affect about 3500 boxes of the Chamber, both desktops and servers, and each Deputy/Party may also ask to migrate his/its (private) computers to the Free System.
A non-profit organization devoted to Linux training and certification has established an affiliate organization in Italy.
A new initiative promoted by the italian association for free software for the next italian political elections (provided that they will actually take place…). The initiative consists in asking the candidates to sign a letter where they engage themselves, in case they will be elected, to promote the use of free software through their political activity.
Italy has adopted The OpenDocument Format (ISO/IEC 23600) as a national standard. The decision was made by UNI, the Italian Organization for Standardization, which is responsible, under appointment from the Italian Government and the EU, to develop, approve and publish technical standards in all economic sectors (industry, trade and services) except for electric and electro-technical ones.
The 2006 edition of Italian Linux Day on October 28 was the first in the six-year history of the event to be celebrated in more than 100 cities in every corner of the country.
The project has deep roots in open source: it was developed in accordance with a set of rules and with the support of the open source community; Eldy was released freeware in order to guarantee the feasibility of the project, but it will have an open future and a self-installing Linux distribution.
WE WON. Therefore 4.5 million Euros of public money will not be spent on proprietary software licenses, since the Ministry failed to consider free software options.
Elpa, based in Italy, has debuted the RD129, an ARM9-based module delivered with Linux kernel 2.6.21.5.