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Other cities like Munich (LibreOffice) and Leipzig (OpenOffice) are doing just fine with the same family of office software. Without further information it is moot to guess if a) the Freiburg admins were not willing or capable of installing and configuring OpenOffice in a way that was satisfying to users or b) the users were unwilling to use the software (something different? something new? no way!) or c) some city managers decided to rather put some money in Microsoft's purse for any number of reasons (similar things happened to other public offices in Germany before).

14:3 International Journal of Law and Information Technology 257

BTW, Stallman (RMS pour les initiés) just had some interesting things to say about these and a DRM "Swindle":
http://www.linux-magazin.de/NEWS/Video-Stallman-ueber-DRM-Patente-und-C
(interview on video in English of course - free from a famous Spanish holiday resort, beats rainy Redmond/WA ;-))

According to this item at the German Linux Magazine, Skype has withdrawn its appeal.

As reported (in german) by Linux-Magazin Online Skype has withdrawn its appeal during todays court hearing. After Skype presented its arguments, the presiding judge indicated the arguments Skype presented had severe weaknesses and Skypes chances were small. At that point Skype decided to withdraw its appeal.

according to this site (in German) the appeal has been withdrawn and skype has retreated with its tail between its legs.

http://www.linux-magazin.de/news/

It seems - as usual - lawyers think they can beat down the "amateur made" gpl ... until they take a few minutes to understand it.

A new review available in the German magazine this month:
http://www.linux-magazin.de/Artikel/ausgabe/2005/1 0

Unfortunately not free...

A few weeks ago, I read an interesting article about Schlund&Partner, one of the largest internet-related companies in Germany these days, developing an eMail-solution of their own, because they weren't able to find anything suiting their demands. They're the guys behind GMX, the arguably most popular eMail service in Central Europe. Their eMailing system, Nemesis, is designed to provide scalability and redundancy all the way, maybe you can get them to relicense it to your company (I don't know which license the project actually is under, sorry), or at least let you evalute their solution so you can deceide what you can actually expect from nowadays eMail-gadgets for the enterprise.

The article was published on the german-speaking Linux-Magazin, Issue "August 2005".

Good luck! :)

A few weeks ago, I read an interesting article about Schlund&Partner, one of the largest internet-related companies in Germany these days, developing an eMail-solution of their own, because they weren't able to find anything suiting their demands. They're the guys behind GMX, the arguably most popular eMail service in Central Europe. Their eMailing system, Nemesis, is designed to provide scalability and redundancy all the way, maybe you can get them to relicense it to your company (I don't know which license the project actually is under, sorry), or at least let you evalute their solution so you can deceide what you can actually expect from nowadays eMail-gadgets for the enterprise.

The article was published on the german-speaking Linux-Magazin, Issue "August 2005".

Good luck! :)

That's a lot you can do with xsltproc and unzip - but xsltproc is way to neat to call it a hack.
Most day-to-day manipulations of Open-Office-Documents can easiely be done with perl:
At the bottom of the article (german) is a listing (Perl)
http://www.linux-magazin.de/Artikel/ausgabe/2004/1 0/perl/perl.html
069 my $oo_output = File::Temp->new(
070 TEMPLATE => 'ooXXXXX',
071 DIR => '/tmp',
072 SUFFIX => '.sxw',
073 UNLINK => 1,
074 );
075
076 $doc->save($oo_output->filename);

Here's a picture of him .. he looks like a fagot.

the magazines i read regulary in austria (schwarzenegger) are c't, iX and the online-mag telepolis. on telepolis there're english articles too and an interessting column named WTC Conspiracy, with the first article about 9/11 posted on 9/13! other good literature is: linux magazine, freeX and of course SPIEGEL. on the web good places are golem, ORF, n-tv. unfortunately are the english magazines quite expensive (wired or hustler, both over EUR 10|-!). grtngs

Did the fact that Debian recieved not one not two but three "Reader's Choice" awards have any influence on your company's decision to no longer directly support the standard distribution of RHL?

There is an article in the german Linux Magazinthat gives some explanation about new 'version mixing', 'downgrading' possibilities in the new apt software under 'woody' (sorry only german language). So you can keep your base system stable and add some additional software from 'testing' or 'unstable', or you can try the 'testing/unstable' release, and if those releases are too buggy, you can downgrade to 'woody' again.

- Yasa

There is an article in the german Linux Magazinthat gives some explanation about new 'version mixing', 'downgrading' possibilities in the new apt software under 'woody' (sorry only german language). So you can keep your base system stable and add some additional software from 'testing' or 'unstable', or you can try the 'testing/unstable' release, and if those releases are too buggy, you can downgrade to 'woody' again.

- Yasa

Please show me some docs showing IE being more standards compliant than Netscape 6, yet alone Mozilla.

Buy it.

http://www.linux-magazin.de/ausgabe/2000/09/Helio/ helio.html

In the latest issue of the german publication Linux Magazin (this article is not available online), Till Jaeger mentioned that Sections 11 and 12 of the GPL, concerning warranty and liability, will be void according to german law.
He explained that the "General Trading Conditions Act" (Gesetz zur Regelung des Rechts der Allgemeinen Geschäftsbedingungen, aka AGBG) makes it impossible in germany to completely withdraw the creators responsibility for a given product, even if the product is donated, like software downloaded for free. I.e. in the case of intend ("Vorsatz") or serious negligence ("grobe Fahrlässigkeit") the author of a program will be liable to a certain extend.

Worst of all I think, because of the complete denial of warranty and liability the GPL is sporting, the aformentioned sections 11 and 12 become void.

So what about a localized "German GPL" or a "Germany Clause" in the GPL to reduce the risk for the program's author to a maximum extend by not completely voiding these sections?

(BTW: Maybe this problem not only concerns germany but also some eastern european countries - concerning trade laws and consumer rights, they have often adopted german legislation in the past decade.)

As some people seem to be interested in it - if you have issue 3/99 of German Linux Magazin, there is a detailed description of the installation process. It's a pretty long report of one user's experience. Unfortunately, the article is not available online, the link just leads to the table of contents ;-( Maybe some German readers still have a copy, or you could ask Linux Magazin editors to make available an online version...

... check out this.