News

  • Computers in schools are an environmental time-bomb

    UK schools are producing 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and spending over £100 million every year on electricity a report published today claims.

    The study, by Open Source consultancy Sirius Corporation, adds that the Goverment's target of interactive whiteboard in every classroom and a computer for every pupil will increase school's power consumption ten fold within the next decade.

  • Government Launches open standards principles

    Whitehall has launched its long-awaited response to the open standards consultation, which will force government bodies to comply with its list of "Open Standards Principles" when purchasing technology.

    Departments must use the principles for all software interoperability and data and document formats. If they do not use the principles they will have to apply for an exemption, according to a Cabinet Office statement. As of today the principles will be embedded in the Cabinet Office's spend control process.

  • Education Quango accused of 'cronyism'

    Outraged bidders for the UK’s Schools Open Source Project have claimed that Becta, the government ‘IT in Education’ quango responsible for commissioning the project, is guilty of ‘cronyism’ and political sleaze.

    Becta awarded the contract for overseeing the open source in schools project to The AlphaPlus Consultancy.

  • EU-funded project will test open source viability

    The European Union is funding a consortium that will test the quality of open source software. The money will help organizations determine whether the open-source software that they're using will be suitable for deployment in the enterprise.

  • EU-funded project to measure quality and viability of open source software

    The European Union is funding a consortium that will test the quality of open source software.

    The Software Quality Observatory for Open Source Software (SQO-OSS) has been awarded €1.6 million under the EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). The total cost of the project is estimated to be €2.47 million.

    SQO-OSS will be developing a suite of software quality assessment tools to analyse and benchmark the quality of source code and prove its suitability for enterprise deployment.