“Results of Australia’s first large-scale Open Source community census have been released to the public. [The report] gives voice to the business potentials, patterns and concerns of a previously mute sector of the IT industry.”

“Australian senator, Karen Lundy, believes US software ‘lock-in’ reduces both competition and technology innovation, thereby hurting the Australian technology market.” — They always get our names wrong! Senator KATE Lundy’s comments noted in the USA.

“The developers of GTK are preparing for a major overhaul that aims to resolve many of the framework’s most significant deficiencies and add next-generation features that will increase flexibility and simplify development.” — Great summary from Ryan.

“Mr Rudd’s hardline approach comes amid Opposition claims that he is too close to China.” — Our newly minted opposition just can’t catch a break, no matter what they try.

“Marieke Hardy’s blog, Reasons You Will Hate Me, has taken out the gong for best Australia/New Zealand blog at the international Bloggies.” — Breakfast radio, First Tuesday Book Club, loud-left, foul-mouthed, alabaster wordsmith. What’s not to like?

“This report simply misses the mark. It’s watered down and mostly wrong, but has a ring of truthiness to it. Gartner realizes that open source is increasingly dominating, but fails to recognize by how much and how quickly.” — Who watches the watchmen?

“The NSW Department of Education has put Microsoft on notice after it agreed to extend its software licensing agreement for just one year instead of renegotiating a new three-year contract.” — Prepares to deploy OpenOffice.org on 41000 PCs by end of 2008

“You’ve heard about Linux. It powers everything from servers to mobile phones, can be found in schools, governments, industry and homes, and a good chunk of the internet’s infrastructure is powered by it.” — Local consumer magazine CHOICE pimping Ubunt

“There should be an insistence now at the policy level on open standards, thereby limiting the capture proprietary software companies have had in the past,” [Senator Lundy] said.

“Sydney-based open source research firm Waugh Partners has published a version of its Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report as a freely-distributable PDF file under a Creative Commons licence.”

“At last week’s Open 2020 Summit we had a video address from the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd. I noticed that the MPEG file for this was much smaller than the videos of the conference presentations.” — Kevin compresses well, I do not.

“Senator Kate Lundy hosted a pre-2020 Summit event in Canberra last week to generate ideas on how open source technology, open standards and open access to information might transform the way government departments and the business world operate.”

“Federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner believes hundreds of millions of dollars can be saved by improving systems guiding government procurement of services, particularly in information technology.”

“Ubuntu Linux was the only system left unscathed in a multi-platform hacking competition last week, but does that mean it is more secure?” — Clearly no one wanted to take home the Sony VAIO! I also made somewhat more serious comments.

“Waugh said a major aim of the survey was to correct misconceptions about the nature of open source development and its use in commercial environments. ‘We need real numbers so our industry has something to stand behind.’”

“The Australian open source industry generates AU$500 million of revenue every year, according to the inaugural Australian Open Source Industry and Community Census, released today at the NSW Trade and Investment Centre.”

“The report […] claims the argument that open source is not well-supported is a ‘misconception’. But according to the CIO’s of Australia’s three largest government departments […] support is a very real concern.” — Seriously misleading headline.

“The research shows that these companies are well-equipped to service public and private sector clients and provide high levels of support,” Mr Waugh said.

“[T]he standardizers of SQL weren’t so arrogant that we thought we could rush […] 6,000 pages in one go, without it [being] visible to the vast, vast majority of the world until it started its FINAL ballot.” — Summarised here, do read the whole thing.

“OOXML works well, but things would have been much better had Microsoft adopted ODF. Microsoft now seems to have been too clever by half, to its own detriment and that of consumers.” — Mainstream opinion piece on OOXML by Graeme Philipson

“For all new development, where deployment and usage is foreseen by parties outside of the Commission Infrastructure, Open Source Software will be the preferred development and deployment platform.” — EC snuggles up closer to FLOSS

“The days of proprietary technology must come to an end. We will no longer accept systems that couple hardware, software and data.” — The US Navy warmly embraces Open Standards (a natural talent for Open Source), for all the right reasons

“An adult Australian, selected at random, is now statistically more likely to be an asthma sufferer than a Brendan Nelson supporter.” — Annabel Crabb is back! Yay!

“Now this is cool. Select the autocomplete entry with the up/down arrows on your keyboard. Press the ‘Delete’ key. The erroneous autocomplete entry is gone forever.” — Best Firefox tip EVER.

“The need for a CEO and improved efficiency stem from OLPC operating ‘almost like a terrorist group, doing almost impossible things,’ and the need to be managed ‘more like Microsoft,’ Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said.” — Serious PR malfunction.

“Every element is impregnated with these aspirations of sociality, play, creation, freedom. As a project and as a device, it’s beautiful and revolutionary.” — Great article from Tom Coates about OLPC.

“Here I am now, working for Google! […] I have chosen to work on GNOME as my ‘20%’ project.” — Manu Cornet, now at Google, recalls his adventures in GNOME during GSoC and GUADEC.

“Australian SMEs aren’t paying nearly enough attention to Linux […] but despite the prevailing attitude, it won’t take much for open source to have a far greater impact in the near future.” — Local research from IDC.

“I will also continue to drive on the left-hand side of the road. Will it be dangerous? Yes. Is it illegal? Highly. But that’s just how committed I am [to my Irish roots].” — Will Ferrell receives the James Joyce award while goofing around in Ireland.

“Starting today, customers in Germany, United Kingdom, France and now Spain can purchase Ubuntu 7.10 with built-in DVD playback on the XPS 1330n” — Good move by Dell, shipping Ubuntu on highly desirable hardware… Not yet in Australia though.

“Meet apt-clone(8). The tool which integrates with the Nexenta system, keeps track of upgrade checkpoints and allows to create/destroy/edit checkpoints by request.” — Where Solaris could be today, if Indiana had built upon existing FLOSS infrastructure.

“You can […] log in to ICQ with the username icqnumber@aol.com on server xmpp.oscar.aol.com on port 5222. TLS is required.” — Works for me. XMPP and OpenID are truly on the march. Outstanding!

“Looking to manage your WordPress install via your phone? Then the award winning WPhone plugin is exactly what you need.” — Extraordinarly tasty (and tasteful!) WordPress admin interface plugin for mobile bloggers. Very sweet.