Open Source Industry Australia

Auto maker PSA Peugeot Citroën last month said it will start using Linux on 20,000 of its workers' PCs. Novell Inc., which sells a version of Linux and is supplying it to Peugeot, says it has recently signed up several large U.S. financial institutions that are installing Linux on some employee PCs. The allure of desktop Linux is the low entry cost: A typical license for Linux from Novell is $50 a year per PC versus the $299 Microsoft charges for Windows to businesses that don't have a long-term contract with the software maker.

Open Source Industry Australia Limited (OSIA) welcomes this week's admission by Microsoft in magazine articles, including Fortune magazine, that the patents it has identified against open source are liable to be struck out as invalid. "We've tried to work it out, but their reasoning is lost on us," said OSIA director Brendan Scott. "They're worried the patents will be invalid, so they're not disclosing them. In the next breath they say its fair for everyone else to pay them for the same patents.

Open Source Industry Australia Limited (OSIA) is conducting a survey of South Australian businesses and professional practitioners working with open source technologies. "There is a common misconception that open source technologies are not well supported in the South Australian market," said Jack Burton, spokesman for OSIA. "This survey is the first step in correcting this perception by demonstrating that the open source industry is vibrant, innovative and numerous," he went on to say.

The Senate is soon due to debate the provisions of the Copyright Bill 2006.

This week the NSW state government went to market for its desktop, notebook and small server needs for at least the next three years, designating the ability to purchase Linux-based systems as "highly desirable". The new arrangement will replace the government's existing Contract ITS2000 for personal computers. By Renai LeMay, ZDNet Australia in ZDNet - 20 September 2006 04:06 PM http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/hardware/soa/NSW_govt_signals_desktop_Linux...

"As soon as support ends for XP, we will look at moving to Linux [desktops]," Babhoota said, adding the back-end switch to open source had cost 17 percent of what a proprietary upgrade had been costed at, with the agency doubling the amount of business it processed in the same 12-month 28 October, 2004period. http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;1585732244;fp;2;fpid;1

Linux Australia in collaboration with the Open Source Industry Association (OSIA) and the Baker & McKenzie Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre at UNSW is proud to present the first Open Source Forum, which will deal with the increasingly important, but often misunderstood, issue of software patents. The Open Source Forums will be short and focused seminars on topical developments in the Open Source field. It is intended that each seminar will include presentations from invited speakers who will represent a range of views.

UK government departments moved a step closer to using open-source operating systems such as Linux after a study found that they are "viable" products. The software can "generate significant savings", the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in its report. More here...