Open Source and Green IT special program of the German government

The CIO newsletter from the Federal Government of Germany (was: KBSt-Newsletter) informs about new activities to stimulate the German economy:

Bereits am 29. Januar 2009 hatte der IT-Rat des Bundes ein vom Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Informationstechnik vorgelegtes Rahmenkonzept über IT-Maßnahmen zum „Pakt für Beschäftigung und Stabilität in Deutschland“ beschlossen. „”Ziel der Maßnahmen ist es, die Bereiche Green-IT, IT-Sicherheit und Open-Source auszubauen sowie innovative zukunftsfähige Technologien und Ideen für die Verwaltung nutzbar zu machen.”“ sagt Staatssekretär Dr. Beus.

The German government invokes the stability and growth package instrument with a framework concept for ICT. The objective of the extraordinary spending is to expand Green-It, Open Source and IT-security solutions for egovernment purposes. Of a total 500 Mio. Euro an amount of 300 Mio. Euro is made immidiately available. 200 Mio. Euro are on hold by the budget committee of the German Bundestages until concrete measures are proposed.

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Crazy KDE project

24 Feb 09 KDE Bugs is not reachable:

bugs.kde.org temporarily offline
bugs.kde.org is temporarily offline to celebrate the KDE 4.2.0 release. Please come back on January 28th.

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Unanimous Consent

OASIS ODF TC: IBM’s Rob Weir explains Unanimous Consent .

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More details on the Russian National Operating System

Open source software development in Russia is one of the most important directives for Igor Schegolev – the Head of the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation. At a key meeting with Werner Knoblich, Red Hat Vice President for EMEA, he announced support for a Russian Fedora association and for Red Hat development in the Russian Federation. He also expressed support for open source infrastructure and applications, and the development of a repository for industry best practice.

February 9, 2009 — Open source software development in Russia is one of the most important directives for Igor Schegolev – the Head of the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation.

On February 5, 2009 Igor Schegolev, the Head of the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation, met with Werner Knoblich, Red Hat Vice President for EMEA at the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation, and other industry leaders.

At the meeting many questions regarding open source software market development and the use of open source software with existing systems were discussed. The Ministry is supporting Red Hat’s initiative to create a Russian association of Fedora developers. Through this association, Russia has become one of the countries, including the USA and India, which participate and influence the development of the world’s most successful Linux project – Red Hat.

“Software development is moving so fast, that it would be impossible to take an available open source product from abroad, re compile it and name it “Russian windows”- because the moment it would be launched it would be already obsolete. The formation of a Russian association of Russian Fedora developers (www.RussianFedora.com) who will be working in Russia is the basis for the creation of a national operating system,” – the Minister says. “We think that the intellectual potential of Russian specialists would allow us not just to build but also to develop
the code,” – Igor Schegolev said.

The Ministry moved beyond the limits of operating systems to further open source software market development and use. “We should pay attention to database management systems, portals, mail systems based on open source software, without it the practical use of such software would be too narrow,” – Schegolev said.

For this purpose the Ministry is ready to support working in co-operation with Red Hat. It would also be sensible to consider the creation of an information resource to gather together “best practice” in the use and adoption of open source software.

Milan Prohaska, director of VDEL – the Red Hat Master distributor for Russia and Eastern Europe, who was present at the meeting stated afterwards: ‘We believe that the creation of a best practice competence center is the most logical next step in wider adoption of Open Source in Russia.”
“Both Red Hat and VDEL, the organizers of Russian Fedora projects, will provide this center with financial and technological support and also help to build the wider local and international IT industry network needed for this Ministry initiative”.

The good news is that Russians will be able to use LXDE as their default windows environment for the Russian Operating System due to the excellent support of RedHat/Fedora. So LXDE is still in the race to win the hearts and minds of the Russian officials.

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NYT: Mini Wind Turbines

The New York Times reports about efforts to bring small wind generators on ordinary roof tops:

“The turbine will conserve energy,” he said. “It’s making us more self-sufficient, and we’re doing our part to cut consumption. You have to think not only about saving money, but about saving resources.”

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KDE top menu bar

Another blog post concerning the top menu bar feature for KDE:

For KDE support of a Mac-style menubar has always been rather a hack, both in the past (KDE 3) and currently (KDE 4), see below for some detailed explanations. Best would be to put proper support directly into Qt. Like there is a special handling of the menubar for OS X, there could be one for FLOSS desktops/shells/X.org, given some well-defined standard system.

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Reding: Open source window of opportunity

Some people found what EU-Commissioner Reding had to say about the European Software Strategy:

believe that these are the necessary preconditions for the European
software industry to ride the rising wave of on-line software. But, the essential
point is that this shift to on-line software will change the way the software
business is done. It will place a new emphasis on open and interoperable
systems that can be upgraded and joined together in networks with other
systems. And, although there will always be a role for proprietary systems, I
believe that the on-line world will see a shift towards open standards and
indeed open source software in order to respond to this new paradigm.

These advantages are ones that give Europe its window of opportunity to
develop a leadership position in software. But this window is small and it will
soon be closed if we don’t act. I can illustrate this already. Even if 70% of
open source developers are European, 90% of the economic benefits are
being won by US companies.

My view is: If we have the brains, we should also get the gains!
That is why we need a European Strategy for Software and we need it now.

And this was November 19, 2007. I wonder if the windows is still open.

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National Operating System in Cuba?

Apparently also Cuba develops its own national operating system, Reuters reports.

The government views the use of Microsoft systems, developed by U.S.-based Microsoft Corp, as a potential threat because it says U.S. security agencies have access to Microsoft codes.

The remarkable aspect about the move is the domino effect. More an more nations develop their own national operating systems. Other nations in Latin America can be expected to follow the fashionable national operating system plans. It can be disputed that the security concerns are justified but software is just another new means of confrontation with the United States for the Island.

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Putin rejects Dell’s sales pitch

Putin explains their educational project to get computers in schools and the quality of their programmers.

Dell: How can we as an IT sector help you broaden the economy as you move out of a crisis and take advantage of that great scientific talent that you have?

Putin: We are not invalids. We don’t have limited capacity. Pensioners should be helped, developing countries should be helped.

The remarks of Putin about support of domestic supporters are highly related to the Russian National Operating System project that seeks to overcome dependencies on foreign licenses. It is not fixed yet whether it would fly but it looks like the financial crisis does a lot to promote that idea.

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Heise about LXDE speed

Heise: Fosdem 2009: Mit Open Source aufrecht durch die Krise gehen

Das gilt auch für einzelne Packete wie den abgespeckten X-Manager LXDE, mit dem Open Office in drei Minuten gestartet werden kann. [It also applies to smaller packages as the lightweight X-manager LXDE, with lxde you can start Openoffice within three minutes.

What did Heise get wrong here?

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