The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta), the government body with the mission of "Leading next generation learning," has for the first time included Open Source enterprises on their list of official software and IT service suppliers for the nation's schools.
Gnome has a new update: Version 2.24 of the free desktop comes with improvements for the user, new communications systems and for the first time, will also serve as a basis for Gnome Mobile, a desktop variation for mobile devices.
IBM declared in a new corporate policy that it was establishing new IT standards and redefining its ties with the International Standards Organization (ISO). If developing countries want to develop their own standards, IBM is willing to support them. Ramifications are clear regarding the turbulent debate around acceptance of Microsoft's Open Office XML (OOXML) data format.
The previous major releases of OpenOffice.org didn't disappoint, so hopes are high for the upcoming version 3.0 of one of the most important open source applications around. We look at what mouth-watering goodies the new version has to offer.
Puppy Linux is an excellent Linux distro for all occasions, but to turn it into a real productivity workhorse, you might want to install OpenOffice.org on it. Unfortunately, the Puppy software repository holds an older version of OpenOffice.org, but you can install the latest release of the productivity suite manually.
Want to expand OpenOffice.org's default functionality? The official extension repository has quite a few extensions you can use to add some nifty features to the productivity suite. Precisely which extensions you might find useful depends, of course, on your particular needs, but there are at least five extensions that deserve a closer look no matter how you use OpenOffice.org.
After some stops and starts, the first release candidate for Open Office 3.0 is finally ready; after some discussions the project team decided today to go for a second try.
The Last Session extension for OpenOffice.org is a must-have tool if you often deal with multiple documents. Using the extension, you can save the currently opened documents on exit, and quickly load them next time you launch OpenOffice.org.
According to a survey by the Austrian broadcasting station ORF, the majority of the parliament is for supporting the use of open source in the public sector.
