IT Reporter

The European Commission's IDABC unit responsible for the Open Source Software Observatory and Repository (OSOR) will publish it's own derivative of Debian GNU/Linux to provide organisations with an easy way to create blogs and forums, the unit announced on Friday.

A beta version of the distribution, called Fpfis (Flexible Platform for Internal Services) will be made available soon on the OSOR-website.

An article for the Open Source Observatory and Repository, published on October 24 here.

Software tenders by European public administration often may not comply with EU regulations, illegally favouring proprietary applications. "These tenders could be protested against, and if necessary the tendering organisations could be taken to court", said Karel De Vriendt, head of the IDABC unit responsible for the Open Source Software Observatory and Repository (osor.eu).

The European Commission's IDABC on Monday published a draft of the 'Guidelines on public procurement and Open Source Software', at the Open Source World conference taking place in Malaga. The guideline shows how how public administrations can end discrimination against Open Source in public tenders. It also details how and when the characteristics of Open Source software, such as the right to use the software without restrictions, the right the study the software code, the right to adapt the software code when needed and the right to share the software with others, can be relevant requirements in public tenders.

An article for the Open Source Observatory and Repository, published on October 21 here.

Sleuth's toolkit includes soldering instructions

DUTCH software engineer Armijn Hemel has just published a manual on how to detect violations of open source software, The GPL Compliance Engineering Guide, here. It details how to take apart bootloaders and firmwares, using tools such as Hexdump, Strings and Grep.

A news item written for The Inquirer.net on 17 October 2008. Read the complete item here