Information Society Watch

April 2, 2008, Kevin J. O'Brien, New York Times

In a reversal of its loss in September, Microsoft has won approval by the International Organisation for Standardisation for its Office Open XML (OOXML), a format for interchangeable Web documents. The international standards designation for OOXML will have important effects on software spending by governments and large companies.

February 27, 2008, India e-News

The European Commission (EC) has imposed a record fine on Microsoft Corporation for its non-compliance with anti-trust regulations. Microsoft has been found to deny access to the protocols and communication mechanisms that would allow its rivals to co-exist and function with Microsoft systems.

December 10, 2007, iGovernment Bureau

The Government of Denmark has mandated that all national, regional and local government bodies and associations of Danish regions move to open standards for software from January 1, 2008. Open standards are defined in terms of their capacity to be fully documented, publicly available, and freely implementable without economic, political or legal constraints.

October 24, 2007, Alastair Otter & James Archibald, Tectonic

The South African government has released a Minimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems in government (MIOS) document. The document explicitly defines an open standard and includes the Open Document format (ODF) as an official standard for South African government communications. The article suggests that the implementation of the MIOS document is now the most important task, as it paves the way for the government to adopt positive FOSS policy.

September 17, 2007, BBC News Service

The article discusses the decision by a European court on the appeal which was filed by Microsoft against the record fine earlier imposed on it by the European Commission.The Commission had found Microsoft guilty of abusing its dominant position in order to negatively impact rivals in server software and certain products such as media players.

4 September 2007, The NewYork Times

Microsoft’s bid to get it's OOXML standard ratified as an Open Standard by the International Organisation for Standardization suffered a rude jolt when members of that body voted to reject OOXML as an international standard. Microsoft needed 75% of the members to support the proposal, however it ended up getting a little more than 58% of the votes.

2007, The European Commission

This report commissioned by the EU Commission addresses the question of what would be the potential impact on the development of the information society if public organisations were to release software fully owned by them under a Open Source license. It argues that publishing software fully owned by public bodies as Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) could facilitate re-use, adaptation and modification of the software by other public organisations, as well as other actors.

23 August, 2007. James Archibald, Tectonic

Free and Open Source software (FOSS) has been steadily gaining acceptance across the world. This article looks at a significant move made by the South African government with respect to usage of open source software in government programs. The SA policy has now changed to mandate the implementation of FOSS solutions as a rule except in cases where a proprietary solution is demonstrated to be significantly superior.

2003, CPTECH

This is an open letter to the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) by representatives of various civil society organisations and educational institutions, encouraging WIPO to engage in discussions on the establishment of open and collaborative networks, as well as their relevance in public policy. The letter provides several instances of successful open and collaborative networks which include the World Wide Web, the Global Positioning System (GPS), The Human Genome Project, among others.

September 30, 2006, Rey A L Taganas & Vijay Kumar Kaul, Economic and Political Weekly

This paper explores the supposed innovative behaviour of firms in the Indian IT sector. Although substantial efforts have been made over the past fifty years by the Indian government in implementing various policy measures, building institutions, and putting strong emphasis on higher education, there has been a systemic failure to promote the emergence of networks of innovation. This, in turn, has impeded the innovation performance of the IT industry.