03.21.08
Quick Mention: Freiburg City Council in Migration to OpenDocument Format
Yes, it’s another piece of domino in this chain. Germany’s OpenDocument strategy appears to be paying off.
DE: One fifth of Freiburg city council migrated to OpenOffice
In the German city of Freiburg, four hundred of the two thousand PCs used by the city council are now running OpenOffice.
The migration to the Open Source suite of office applications is a intermediate goal, saving the city up to half a million euro in licence costs. The city’s final aim is to switch to an Open Source desktop.
The council began its office application migration last July, when it decided to use the ISO-approved Open Document Format (ODF) as a document standard.
Other recent news from Germany:
- Germany upgrades ODF to “recommended”
- German county adopts OpenOffice.org
- German penal institutions looking into OpenOffice.org
- [German] Federal Employment Office switches to Linux
And the good news keeps coming at a rapid pace. this is why Microsoft is so frantic about ISO and OOXML. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.