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Deutsch: Neue Nutzung offener Lizenzen durch die niederländische und britische...

Encouraging moves in promoting the open licence content in governmental projects have been recently made in the Netherlands and UK.

The Netherlands government launched on 31 March 2010 Rijksoverheid.nl, a single website for communications for all Dutch ministries, committing also to promote open sharing of public sector information. The content is available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licence. Presently, there are 5 ministries active on this website and the rest of the ministries will be added during this year.

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Deutsch: Einige deutsche Bibliotheken veröffentlichen ihre Katalogdaten

Some German libraries, most of them from Cologne, announced at the beginning of the Leipzig Congress for Information and Library on 15 March 2010 that they would release 5.4 million bibliographic records under an open licence.

The University and Public Library of Cologne (USB), the Library of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, the University Library of the University of Applied Science of Cologne and the the Library Centre of Rhineland-Palatinate in cooperation with the North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Center are the first German libraries to implement the Open Access principles to their catalogue

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Deutsch: Das Public-Domain-Manifest

A new public manifest called the Public Domain Manifesto was launched on 25 January 2010, as a document developed within COMMUNIA, the European Thematic Network on the Digital Public Domain, during the last two years.

According to the network, The Public Domain ensures that the principles of Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ("Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits") can be fully enjoyed by everyone across the world.

The document outlines a series of general principles (opening with: the Public Domain i

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Deutsch: Ungarn führt verbindliche Open Standards für öffentliche Institutio...

The Hungarian Parliament decided at the end of 2009 to make open standards mandatory for communications between public institutions, utility companies and citizens through the central governmental system.

The Parliament amended Act LX of 2009 on electronic public services.

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Deutsch: Die Europäische Kommission untersucht die Zukunft von MySQL

The acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle is investigated by the European Commission for its potential anti-competition effects, including the future role of MySQL as an open source database software owned by Oracle.

The debate between opponents and supporters of the merger has been tenser in the past weeks, after Oracle called on its biggest customers to support its position in the hearings at the European Commission, while the creator of the MySQL Monty Widenius made a public appeal to the open source community to reject the terms of this acquisition, unless Oracle commits to a series of issues that will

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Deutsch: Europäische Kommission ändert Offenheitskonzept im Entwurf des eGov ...

A second draft of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) was recently leaked to the press showing that the European Commission (EC) has decided to take the side of Business Software Alliance (BSA), a lobby group for proprietary software vendors.

The first draft of EIF is a document produced in 2004 by the "Interoperable delivery of pan-European eGovernment services to public administrations, businesses and citizens" (IDABC) for the European Union.

According to EIF I, open standards are the key in obtaining interoperability in pan-European eGovernment services.

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Deutsch: Microsoft versucht, die EU-Auflagen zu erfüllen

After having long criticised and penalised Microsoft for its anti-competitive practices, the European Union seems to be now at the point of trying to close up the battle with the company after Microsoft has made a new offer to give its customers access to a wider range of web browsers through its Windows operating system and to share information with its competitors.

"The commission will formally market test proposals made by Microsoft to address concerns regarding the tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows PC operating system," said the EU's competition commissioner Neelie Kroes who also expressed the idea that a at a p

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Deutsch: Pariser Berufungsgerichtshof mit einem GPL-Fall

The Paris Court of Appeals published in September 2009 its decision on a case that involved the distribution of the VNC Software, remote desktop access software available under GPL GNU licence.

The case was brought forward by AFPA (Association for professional education of adults) against Edu4, a commercial company. Edu4 won a contract in 2000 that foreseen the delivery of a software solution to AFPA.