Resources
The UK has benefited from the 2012 Open Standards policy which was formally reviewed in 2015, and the guidance toward selecting Open Source, as described in the official UK government IT strategy, which states “where appropriate Open Source solutions and… Continue Reading
Last autumn, the OSC was co-host with the BCS Open Source Specialist Group of Open for Business as part of the Wuthering Bytes festival. This was a one day conference to help those wanting to start their own open source… Continue Reading
On Friday 8th January, the Department for Education (DfE) approved an Open Systems IT Management (OSIM) Level 2 course to be eligible for 16-19 Performance Points counting towards the school’s league table attainment. It is an area of skills shortage… Continue Reading
We’re grateful to “The Register” for drawing attention to the latest licensing information regarding (non) transferability of Microsoft Office licences. We think it’s worth reading in conjunction with: new versions of Microsoft Outlook won’t allow access to older format documents… Continue Reading
Last March we reported on the government’s reply to an MP’s question on Open Source Software and Open Standards. As we said then: it all hinges on what you mean by “wherever possible” and also that “wherever possible” includes “nowhere”… Continue Reading
David A Wheeler has developed an extensive evaluation guide to choosing open source software. His 2007 studyprovides quantitative data that open source software is a reasonable or even superior approach to using the proprietary competition.
In an interesting piece of newspeak we are told that new versions of Microsoft Outlook won’t allow access to older format documents: As much as we love adding new features to Outlook, for the maintainability of our product we sometimes… Continue Reading
Since 1996 which saw the publication of the Green Paper “Government Direct” the Government has published a new digital strategy almost annually, often supplemented. “Government Direct” not easy to find now but a contemporaneous analysis explains that the three purposes… Continue Reading
We’ve discussed the adverse consequences of arbitrary changes in proprietary software for ordinary users when we learned the the music composition software Sibelius is going into deep freeze. Here’s another example why everyone should want software to be open source.
Apparently two wrongs do make a right The London School of Economics has just published some interesting research on patent litigation: Trolls at the High Court? (pdf) In the abstract we can read: Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs), often referred to… Continue Reading