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While it is hard to estimate how many everyday users have defected from Windows or Apple software to join the open-source movement, Ubuntu (pronounced oo-boon-too) has emerged as one of the Linux desktop packages of choice for those looking for a basic desktop alternative.

Open-source software generally refers to programs such as Linux and Firefox where the source code can be modified upon the request of users or other developers.

Researcher IDC recently surveyed more than 5000 developers from 116 countries, and found the use of open-source software to be "pervasive, used by almost three-quarters of organisations and spanning hundreds of thousands of projects".

Government IT departments looking to cut costs associated with proprietary packages software are also being encouraged to embrace open-source software and, last week, India's communist-run Kerala state announced plans to reduce Microsoft's dominance in schools by promoting the use of Linux.

Popular flavours of Linux include Red Hat and SUSE and, while these are gaining traction at the enterprise level, a strong belief persists that the operating system is not ready for ordinary desktop users.

To set itself apart, Ubuntu markets itself as "Linux for human beings" and, while those who have joined the movement praise its easy installation and the range of pre-packaged software, James Dumay, a member of Sydney Linux User Group, said it hadn't always been the case.

"Until recently Linux desktop applications were not ready for consumption by the general public because a lot of people were writing a lot applications to do various tasks and these didn't conform to any one standard. This caused problems with usability and inconsistency across applications," he said.

However projects such as GNOME have introduced new guidelines to ensure consistency across common desktop operations, he said.

Ubuntu can be downloaded or shipped in disk format free to users. Also bundled with the OS is the OpenOffice software suite (which includes word processor, presentation and spreadsheet applications), the Firefox browser, email and instant messaging tools, media player software and support for a wide range of peripherals such as webcams and printers.

However not all popular applications are available out of the box, especially when it comes to graphics and gaming. Although users can choose from an enormous range of applications for the OS, such as image-editing program The GIMP, or Cedega for running PC games on top of Linux, these must be sourced and downloaded individually.

Full story at SMH

The Zope Amendment Production Platform, or ZAPP, is a repository for every planning scheme in the state, according to the project's manager Sharon Tyrer. ZAPP houses all documents relating to town planning schemes, and the legislative process that amendments, such as district re-zoning, go through.

"We didn't have any systems for ZAPP [but] literally a manual system where we updated Word documents and burnt them to CD," Tyrer said.

Presently, Lotus Notes is the DSE's preferred program for smaller applications and the management tracking system.

"We did have Quickplace-based system called EDe but it didn't store planning schemes and had limitations on number of users so the system fell down. People stopped using it and went back to sending files through the post."

As its name indicates, ZAPP is built on the Zope open source application server, which is developed with the Python programming language.

Although at the forefront of open source software adoption by encouraging government-funded organizations like Multimedia Victoria and Open Source Victoria, the state's DSE has quietly been working on ZAPP for the past two years.

"The first business case was done in November 2000 which identified the need to develop a system to look after document flow," Tyrer said. "In 2001 we decided to go with Zope and it was a bit of a fight to get that through because we didn't use much open source technology at the time."

The DSE had contracted Zope Corporation to do the custom development but after performing an initial scope, the company pulled out of the local market in 2002. After going to tender, the DSE chose Melbourne-based open source service provider Obsidian Consulting as its development partner for ZAPP.

"ZAPP takes everything through and stores it at each different legislative process and date-stamps everything at each point, taking snapshots of every planning scheme so people can look at how it has changed," Tyrer said.

The project, going since 2003 with Obsidian, will officially finish development this week.

The actual go-live date is set for February 2006 when over 800 planners and administrative staff across the state will access a repository of 82 300MB planning schemes and an amendment rate of 500 per year.

"We literally went from nothing two years ago to quite a lot of open source technology here," Tyrer said.

"The main programmers are using python, we also use a few other programs, like Kupu, for editing documents and a combination of three open source programs for generating PDFs."

Overall, ZAPP comprises seven major open source applications and is hosted on Linux. Two new dual-core AMD Opteron systems will be purchased to increase the hosting from two boxes to four when ZAPP goes live.

"Notes is the preferred content management system in DSE, but there was no way Notes could do it," Tyrer said. "Notes couldn't handle the workflow because the process is too complex. It also couldn't handle the production of legislative documents [or] generate [those] documents accurately for us." In the absence of an off-the-shelf product for DSE's requirements, Tyrer said ZAPP had to be a custom solution.

"Zope has no licence fees, is all Web based, and has so many benefits across the board," she said. "The licensing problem could have been a big one for councils, but with ZAPP we have removed that obstacle; $1.2 million is quite cheap for what we have got."

Despite initial concerns from the IT department about using an unknown program, Tyrer said both the previous and current CIOs have been "fantastically supportive" of the ZAPP project, which she hopes will be a beachhead for further deployments.

"Open source is not as well received as I had hoped but it's building momentum," she said. "We're looking at extending open source usage [but] still have to convince people that think if you don't have to pay for [something] it's no good."

Tyrer said Zapp has "opened doors" as to what the DSE can do with software and is now getting the strategists together to develop a "cohesive IT plan".

"It's a snowball effect and will replace the amendment tracking system [now] in Notes and hopefully take over online publishing of planning schemes," she said, adding the business cases for those projects are being developed.

With funding approval, the DSE will develop a more advanced planning schemes online system for public access and integrate the Web site - which still requires manual updating - with Zapp in 2006.

In keeping with the free software ethos, the DSE will also release ZAPP as an open source project "within reason" in August next year, making it available for download under the Obsidian licence.

"ZAPP could be used for anything - anywhere there is content - as it publishes really well," Tyrer said. Tyrer praised Obsidian's work on ZAPP, describing it as "absolutely brilliant".

"We are employing a small, growing company and sending money back into the state," she said. "It's a win-win situation and I don't think we could get it done any cheaper."

So far Tyrer hasn't had any interest in ZAPP from the other states but said that should change once it is better understood.

The Zope Amendment Production Platform (ZAPP) at a glance

- Australia's largest open source business/government project

- Two years of development by Melbourne-based Obsidian

- Cost $1.2 million

- Made up of python, Zope, Kupu, rsync, and other open source software

- Over 24GB of initial data and 500 amendments per year

- Thousands of pages of content

- Used by over 800 planners and administrators across Victoria

- Hosted on Linux and AMD Opteron systems

- Will be released as an open source project

Source: Lunixworld

State Services Commission Deputy Director for ICT Laurence Millar said today that the SSC was releasing to other government agencies the open source code for a government web guidelines compliant content management system (CMS) based on Plone.

He said the CMS had been used for the recent redevelopment of www.e.govt.nz, as well as the newly launched website for the Ministry of Women's Affairs.

The system is available to both central and local government bodies, he said.

"Plone is a particularly powerful tool for managing websites. Modifying it to make it Web Guidelines compliant means that other government agencies can use this code to build and manage their websites knowing that they are using best practice accessibility standards.

"The growth of content on New Zealand government websites, and the policies around the maintenance of this content, means that content management is an increasingly important issue for government agencies.

"The availability and accessibility of government information and services over the internet is integral to the achievement of the e-government strategy goal of transforming government by June 2010.

"Content Management Systems have an important role to play in making this happen," Mr Millar said.

Plone was developed in 1999 and has since expanded to include 90 developers working on the core software and some 250 various add-on Plone products, he said.

"We were looking for an open source solution that had the requisite functionality, an established track record and a 'critical mass' of developer support.

"Plone met all those criteria.

"Other government agencies can now build on our experience and resources, to ensure they get a content management system that meets their business requirements, is Web Guidelines compliant and is a very cost effective solution," Mr Millar said.

Plone was developed as an intranet and extranet server, a document publishing system, a portal server and as a groupware tool for collaboration between separately located entities, according to the developer website..

The tool is 'technology neutral' and runs on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris and BSD, among others, developers say.

Free and capable of being installed in minutes using click-wizards, Plone is built using Zope, an object oriented application server. The language that drives Zope and Plone is Python.

Plone is licensed under the GNU General Public License, the same license Linux uses.

The deal is the second important open source software announcement Mr Millar has made in the last two months.

In October, Mr Millar announced the availability of a government-wide license agreement between the Department of Inland Revenue and Novell, saying "this agreement marks increased opportunities for government agencies, giving them greater flexibility and freedom in their choice of software."

Novell manages the Suse implementation of Linux.

"Open source is a viable alternative or, in some cases, a complementary option to proprietary solutions. This deal provides a framework for other government agencies to introduce or augment their use of open source solutions.

"Robust competition in the government software market is good for New Zealand and has the added advantage of ensuring the government avoids dependence on a limited range of software products and services," Mr Millar said in October.

Source: National Business Review (NZ)

OpenOffice has its roots in Sun Microsystems' StarOffice suite of programs. Five years ago, Sun turned its proprietary software into an open-source project. Only recently, however, has the competitor to Microsoft's Office attracted serious attention.

Now Google believes it can help OpenOffice--perhaps working to pare down the software's memory requirements or its mammoth 80MB download size, said Chris DiBona, manager for open-source programs at the search company.

"We want to hire a couple of folks to help make OpenOffice better," DiBona said.

Google has shown an affinity for open-source software, which are programs developed in the open and available for free. Many of the company's programmers came of age in the open-source era, so advancing the open-source agenda comes naturally, DiBona said. But the company also has business reasons to justify its open-source embrace.

"We use a fair amount of open-source software at Google. We want to make sure that's a healthy community. And we want to make sure open source preserves competitiveness within the industry," he said.

Earlier in October, Google and Sun announced a partnership to boost several software projects, but released few details. Asked about OpenOffice collaboration, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at the time only that the search engine power would "work to make the distribution of (OpenOffice) more broad." But OpenOffice, like the other software projects the partners intend to work on, competes directly with Microsoft software--a point that has not gone unnoticed.

Full story: ZDNet.com

Japan is drawing up guidelines for its ministries recommending open source software such as Linux as an "important option" in government procurement, an official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said

"This is not intended to exclude a particular software nor to recommend a particular one but it reflects the recent development of open source software as reliable systems," the official said.

"Currently our procurement of software is dominated by commercial software," the majority of which is Windows, the official added.

Linux was created by Linus Torvalds who made the software freely available to the public and later gained the support of major companies such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

Although Windows is used on about 90 per cent of the world's personal computers, some governments as well as large organisations have switched to Linux or have threatened to do so to get discounts from Microsoft.

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily reported that Japan saw the use of Linux as a way of lowering procurement costs and bolstering its defences against cyber-attacks.

Separately, Japan, China and South Korea agreed earlier this year to jointly develop a new computer operating system based on Linux as an alternative to the dominant Windows, the official said.

"Apart from the procurement issue, this project is intended to develop an operating system that supports languages that have Chinese characters," the official said.



Source: Sydney Morning Herald

But a leading freeware advocate said Tuesday it remains to be seen whether President Alejandro Toledo will sign the bill into law.

"There are many associations on a national level that do not agree with this because they believe it will affect their interests," Jose Cairo Gallardo, president of the Peruvian Free Software Association, said.

In a move that went largely unnoticed, Congress voted 61-0 last Thursday to approve the legislation, which would mandate "neutrality" to guarantee public institutions a choice between proprietary software, like Microsoft's, and open-source software, which some users consider more stable, adaptable, cheaper, and less susceptible to viruses and hacker attacks.

The new law would also prohibit any public institution from purchasing computer hardware that utilizes only one software platform or "in any manner limits information autonomy."

There is no prohibition on public institutions regarding the use of open-source software, but open-source software developers are still at a great disadvantage to large companies, like Microsoft, said Cairo Gallardo.

"This would level the playing field," he said. "It would not only be about the sale of software licenses. The one that offers better service obviously would have the better expectation of winning" a public bid, he said. "This would break the monopoly."

The legislation would mandate government institutions evaluating bids from software vendors to compare the use of proprietary software - in which the source code is mostly secret and licensing fees are charged for upgrades - to open-source software, in which the underlying code is available to anyone wanting to study, change and improve its design and then make those suggestions available on the Internet.

Toledo has 25 working days to sign the new bill into law or send it back to Congress with "observations" to modify it, which would set back its passage and possibly kill the initiative.

A call to the government palace seeking the president's position on the issue went unanswered. Microsoft did not immediately comment.

The bill's sponsor, Peruvian Congressman Edgar Villanueva, had pushed three years ago for a law to oblige all public institutions to convert exclusively to open-source software.

Microsoft and several Peruvian software companies lobbied hard against the measure, which garnered little support from lawmakers.

In July 2002, Toledo clearly sided with the software companies, appearing with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates to announce the donation of $550,000 (euro458,142) in funds, software and consulting services to the Peruvian government for educational and "e-government" initiatives.

Several countries, including Brazil, China, France, Germany, Japan and South Korea have been actively moving toward open-source alternatives, like the Linux operating system.

Massachusetts government officials on Thursday unveiled plans to phase out Microsoft Office in favor of office productivity suites that support an open-document format from the OASIS standards body, according to a statement from the commonwealth.

Massachusetts will support the newly ratified Open Document Format for Office Applications, or OpenDocument, as the standard for its office documents, according to the statement posted on the governmental Web site by Peter Quinn, chief information officer for Massachusetts. Developed within Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), OpenDocument is an XML (Extensible Markup Language)-based file format that covers the features required by text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents.

Full Story at www.pcworld.com

A study by IDC Australia software and services research director Tim Sheedy suggests increased applications for Linux and lower total cost for businesses are driving the adoption.

Other factors driving take-up were the security of the platform and the availability of applications used for management.

The study covered 307 companies and was conducted in the last quarter of 2004. It included data from 147 small companies (less than 100 employees), 117 medium-sized companies (between 100 and 499 employees) and 43 large companies (more than 500 employees).

The Linux business usage study is skewed towards Linux users and, despite weighting, is not completely representative of the Australian business market. It aims to provide a snapshot of Linux usage in Australian business in 2004.
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He said IDC research found the amounts that could be saved by deploying a major application on Linux were large. "With more and more IT staff acquiring Linux knowledge, there are fewer roadblocks to such a deployment," he said.

The popular belief that the low or "zero" cost of Linux was not a factor in take-up appeared to be erroneous, Mr Sheedy said.

"The fact that many organisations would slow their Linux deployments if Windows were available with a more attractive licensing arrangement or at a better price is a telling factor," he said.

Nokia has announced they have developed a new web browser for their series 60 phones based on the recently opened sourced WebCore from Apple.

read the full release here