Greens don't accept Berlin 'nein' to open source, Jun 26, 2007

The Green Party is accusing the Berlin city government of lacking a coherent IT strategy and thus not being in a position to adequately judge the merits of open source software.

The German federal government in Berlin, which is an advocate for open-source software in the public sector, may have some lobbying to do at its own front door.

An initiative backed by industry giants Intel and Nokia aims to increase the development and use of open source software in mobile phones.

Initially targeted at the businesses in the life sciences, computer-aided engineering and finance sectors, IBM will offer preconfigured "snap-together" cluster systems for customers using the company's computers and storage devices.

European car manufacturing giant PSA Peugeot Citroen has agreed to one of the continent's largest-ever deployments of open-source Linux software on desktop computers.

Munich has begun its migration to Linux on the desktop, a year later than planned and nearly three years since the city announced its move to open source software.

The Franconia region around Nuremberg, Germany, hopes to establish Europe’s first "Linux Valley" with the launch of a new business campus focused on open-source innovation.

The robot software system is based on the open-source Linux operation system. "We decided to use Linux for a couple of reasons," Stengl said. "One is security. Another is that we've found it easier to program our application on this platform."

Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) will present several new open source-based desktop and security applications on Wednesday at a local Linux event.

The migration of around 300 business applications from Windows to Linux is one of the biggest challenges facing the city of Munich, which has embarked on one of Europe's largest open-source projects in the public sector.

While one software visionary wonders how to get young people interested in developing dry business application software, another may have the solution: open source.

The city of Munich has selected two local German software companies to equip all 14,000 computers in its public administration with Linux and other open-source office applications.

Wincor Nixdorf AG, a supplier of IT systems for the banking and retail sectors, will install the open source Linux operating system in its check-out systems under an agreement announced Monday with Novell Inc.

German banks and insurance companies interested in implementing open source Linux in their operations can click to a new portal for information about products, suppliers, applications and more.

Through Oct. 15, the Waltham, Massachusetts, software company is offering a 60 percent discount on all products to public sector agencies and administrations in Germany with up to 500 computer users, the company said Thursday.

You appear to be making some significant shifts in your strategy, moving beyond PDAs to smart phones and even Linux. Why?

Two years ago, we began to see the real growth opportunities in the handheld-computing market were shifting from stand-alone devices, like the original Palm Pilot, to devices that combine features of the handheld computer with communicator devices, whether it's a smart phone [Treo 650 review] or a BlackBerry-type device. We began refocusing our development efforts to serve that market, which we saw as the future.

A new version of GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) desktop interfaces is now available for download.

After launching two of the world's first Linux smart phones, China's E28 is now offering handset manufacturers the opportunity to license its software and hardware designs based on the increasingly popular open-source operating system.

After launching two of the world's first Linux smart phones, China's E28 is now offering handset manufacturers the opportunity to license its software and hardware designs based on the increasingly popular open-source operating system.

Tough economic times in Germany have made Linux and other open source software products appear tantalizing to local businesses.