Despite a struggling economy and public debt, the Hungarian government continues to spend millions on Microsoft licences when cheaper alternatives exist, say open source groups

With governments across Europe including the UK looking to slash public spending to tackle budget deficits resulting from bank bail-outs and other effects of the recession, open source could be an important way to cut IT costs, according to free software advocates.

But with Microsoft and other IT vendors equally keen to maintain lucrative government contracts as the private sector continues to keep costs down, open source groups in countries such as Switzerland and Hungary are asking hard questions about why the software is not even being considered as an option for some public sector departments.

According to a statement on the EU Open Source Observatory and Repository for European public administrations (OSOR) – a site for information exchange about community developed software – five open source groups including the Hungarian Open Document Format Alliance (ODFA)  are petitioning the Hungarian government to disclose how much it spends on proprietary software licences.

In an open letter to the Hungarian government’s procurement agency – Directorate General for Central Services (KSZF) – the ODFA states that last year the government spent around 9.5bn Hungarian forints (35 million Euros) on Microsoft software and has already spent 6.3m Euros on educational licenses and millions more on consultation and services from the software giant. “Please make your calculations known to the public which will prove that open source will not be a viable low cost alternative,” the letter states.

Like other economies in eastern Europe, Hungary has taken a battering during the financial crisis and was the first EU country to accept a loan from the International Monetary Fund in October, worth around £15.6 billion.

For more go to: eWeek Europe UK

Internet registry RIPE NCC turned a blind eye to cybercrime, and Russian police corruption helped the perpetrators get away with it, according to the UK Serious Organised Crime Agency

Amsterdam-based Internet registry organisation RIPE NCC has been singled out for its involvement with notorious criminal network provider Russian Business Network (RBN) by the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency.

The registrar took money from the well-known criminal organisation, and subsequently corruption in the Russian police allowed the network’s organisers to escape SOCA’s clutches according to Andy Auld, head of intelligence for the agency’s e-crime department, speaking at the RSA Conference Europe security event this week in London.

RIPE NCC denies any wrong-doing and Auld explained that the registrar wasn’t actually being investigated for its involvement with RBN – but as the registry body had accepted payment from the Russian criminal organisation, it could be seen by some as having been complicit in criminal activities, he said.

“An entity like Russian Business Network – a criminal ISP and recognised as such by just about every media outlet worldwide that covers these things – RBN was registered as local internet registry with RIPE, the European body allocating IP resources to industry,” explained Auld.

The SOCA officer argued that any company that does business with a known cyber-criminal organisation such as RBN could itself be open to accusations of acting illegally.

For more go to: eweekeurope.co.uk

European legal committee member Brian Crowley has publicly supported an Irish investment by Intel – which was recently fined €1 million for market abuse

The comments from Brian Crowley, MEP for The South, one of four European constituencies in Ireland, appear in a press release issued by Intel this week discussing the launch of a new Innovation Open Lab at the Intel Ireland campus in Leixlip, County Kildare.

The launch of the lab was also attended by Conor Lenihan, Ireland’s Minister for Science, Technology & Innovation as well as Dr. Martin Curley, global director, Intel IT Innovation and director, Intel Labs Europe. In a press release issued by Intel, Crowley praised Intel for its contribution to research and development in Ireland.

For more go to: eWeek Europe UK

A senior lawyer at Microsoft is calling for the creation of a global patent system to make it easier and faster for corporations to enforce their intellectual property rights around the world.

In a blog posting on Tuesday, Microsoft’s Deputy General Counsel Horacio Gutierrez said that a backlog of patent applications internationally was needed to tackle the 3.5 million pending patent applications around the world — including around 750,000 in the US.

“In today’s world of universal connectivity, global business and collaborative innovation, it is time for a world patent that is derived from a single patent application, examined and prosecuted by a single examining authority and litigated before a single judicial body,” said Guiterrez. “A harmonized, global patent system would resolve many of the criticisms leveled at national patent systems over unmanageable backlogs and interminable pendency periods.”

Guiterrez went on to praise efforts to harmonise international patent systems through projects such ad the Patent Prosecution Highway and the “IP5” partnership but said more needed to be done to allow corporations to protect their intellectual property.

For more go to: ZDNet UK

The UK government has taken Internet copyright-protection out of Ofcom’s hands, and is rushing through measures that could cut off everyone at an address

File sharers in the UK could have internet access for their whole household suspended. New government proposals would bypass a planned Ofcom consultation and enact swift retribution for those persistent copyright-infringers.

Privacy advocates have criticised a government announcement that called for feedback on a swifter, tougher regime than that originally proposed in the Digital Britain report. Tthe forthcoming Digital Economy Bill could allow more drastic action against file-sharers including suspending their internet access.

The government said that it was considering actions that would include forcing ISPs to take action against “repeat infringers” which could include blocking access to download sites, reducing broadband speeds or even “temporarily” suspending an individual’s internet access.

For more go to: eWeek Europe UK

Technical progress has spurred some wasteful use of resources; but it’s also key to green thinking, argues Andrew Donoghue.

Switching PCs off at night and sensible recycling are just some of the ways to tackle climate change, we are told. But if, as a society, we are really concerned about global warming, surely some more radical action is called for?

For example, why not just ban progress? I mean we’ve got garlic crushers, iPods, electric cars and SuBo on Britain’s Got Talent – how much more progress do we really need?

We could simply decide that all the current designs for cars, washing machines, medical endoscopes and wind turbines actually work pretty well thank you very much; so let’s just stop developing any new ones.

If your toaster breaks down, don’t buy the latest Toast-amatic 3000 with self-levelling Bagel cradle; just fix the one you have. Or if you really must consume, order exactly the same model again.

Sweat those assets

A ban on all thing new would go down well with environmentalists, who are very keen on the idea of using things for as long as possible, otherwise known as “sweating assets”. Their reasoning is that everything comes with an in-built carbon debt accrued during its production.

For more go to my Green Scene Column

Companies appear to be changing the way they operate vehicle fleets in response to the recession and climate change but if the economy improves, will the trend towards greener fleets go into reverse? By Andrew Donoghue.

For more go to: HR Magazine UK

The Home Office is now talking less about counter-terrorism and more about easing travel in Europe

The UK government appears to have changed tactics when it comes to the roll-out of its controversial ID Card with the idea that it will make it easier for Brits to travel in Europe without having to lug about a bulky passport and will simply be another plastic card for people to carry about.

Mock-ups of the card have been made public before, but this week the government announced the final look of the plastic card at events in London and Manchester this week. The card design includes “the Royal Coat of Arms on the front and features a floral pattern representing the four floral emblems of the UK: the shamrock, daffodil, thistle and rose”, the Home Office revealed.

But in a rather downplayed statement on the benefits of the card, Home Secretary Alan Johnson opted to avoid the rhetoric about preventing acts of terrorism which have previously been attributed to the ID Card and instead appeared to argue that citizens already carry around plenty of pieces of plastic already and the ID Card was just another, albeit important, addition.

“Given the growing problem of identity fraud and the inconvenience of having to carry passports, coupled with gas bills or six months worth of bank statements to prove identity, I believe the ID card will be welcomed as an important addition to the many plastic cards that most people already carry,” he said.

For more go to: eWeek Europe UK

Latest piece for SC Magazine:

On a visit to the US shortly after the civil war, Oscar Wilde was asked why he thought the country was so violent. “I can tell you why America is so violent,” Wilde replied, “it is because your wallpaper is so ugly.”

That might sound like a typical Wildean witticism, and it is, but what Wilde was really expressing was the importance that he and others in the aesthetic movement attributed to beauty and good craftsmanship and its impact on how people behave. To be surrounded by ugliness, the Irish writer believed, led to ugly thoughts and ugly actions.

It might sound like a stretch to apply this philosophy to the current popularity of devices such as the iPhone, but there is a link between good design and productivity, according to some experts. “Although it would be difficult to quantify through a cost-benefit analysis, a happier user is generally considered to be more productive,” analyst group Gartner claimed in a 2008 report on employee-owned technology schemes.

At least some of the momentum driving staff to want to use consumer technology in the workplace is that on the whole it not only looks better but, crucially, is a lot more user-friendly than the “good enough” approach taken by many business-technology makers.

For more go to: SC Magazine UK

My latest interview piece for I Magazine:

The idea of being outside of the system – not part of the establishment – must be high on the list of reasons why the open source movement attracts so many devoted, often fanatical, followers. Rebelling against the perceived control that proprietary software (most notably Microsoft) and closed standards yield is exciting and just a little bit dangerous.

It’s not hard to understand, then, why a country such as France, whose national identity is so closely tied to rebellion and revolution, would find a natural affinity for this community-developed software. Open source embodies the idea of people uniting around a shared belief to achieve a goal.

While creating an open source database might not be quite as dramatic as beheading aristocrats with the guillotine, there is at least some common ground with the French revolutionary motto of liberté, égalité, fraternité.

With a zeal that could almost be described as revolutionary, France’s public sector has taken to open source and open standards like few other governments around the world. From the Ministry of Finance to the military, free software and open standards have not only been accepted, they are actually stipulated.

For more go to I-CIO.