An August 09, 2006 ODSL and Xandros press release includes:

Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a global consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux® and open source software, and Xandros, the leading provider of easy-to-use Linux alternatives to Windows desktop and server products, today announced that Xandros is joining the Labs to help drive the adoption of desktop Linux. Xandros will participate in OSDL's Desktop Linux (DTL) working group with a specific focus on advancing standards-based usability and consistency.

Xandros is has headquarters in New York, offices in Frankfurt and Mumbai, and research and development facilities in Ottawa.

FACIL, is holding an event on Friday the 11th of August 2006, 18h00 at the CRIM (550 Sherbrooke O., suite 100, near metro McGill).

Read the English translation of the announcement. I will be there to help clarify where Canada differs from the French process and law.

FACIL is a non-profit organization that promotes the use of Free Software in Quebec.

A NewsForge article by Bruce Byfield includes:

Torvalds' comments should probably be read in the context of his statement that his particular concerns, notably the mention of DRM, have not been addressed. Yet, in fact, they have been. In an interview with NewsForge, Eben Moglen, who heads the revision process, specifically mentioned that some changes in the second draft were specifically made in response to Torvalds' concerns. Apparently, the changes were not enough to satisfy Torvalds, who has ideological differences with the FSF, but that is no reason to condemn the process itself as hypocritical.

With the recent launch of the Petition to protect Information Technology property rights at the Ottawa Linux Symposium (French translation in progress), we now move to the harder stage of explaining the petition not only to those who we want to sign it, but those whose activities we wish to influence. It is not only politicians who must help protect our property rights, but also software authors who we want to discourage from working with monopolies in the hardware manufacturing and content industries to circumvent our property rights.

Interview: Henry Spencer, Part1

Henry Spencer 2006

From Wikipedia

Henry Spencer is a co-author of C News and The Ten Commandments for C Programmers. Whilst working at the University of Toronto he ran the first active Usenet site outside the US, starting in 1981. His records from that period were eventually acquired by Google to provide an archive of Usenet in the 1980s.

In light of the Toronto District School Board discussions, I thought this recent news item appropriate and very encouraging:

Brandon Elementary transformed by K12LTSP - Two parent volunteers at an Atlanta district school have revolutionized technology use there by replacing Windows workstations with Linux on thin clients, using K12LTSP. [Newsforge]

Back in 1997, six years before the lawsuit started, I wrote an article for Linux Journal that suggested the initials SCO stood for "Software Considered Obsolete". As I read about the fallout from the outright dismissal of most of its lawsuit against IBM, it seems more and more likely that "obsolete" will refer not only to the company's software but -- soon enough -- to the company itself.

The story in ITBusiness.ca gave a good overview of a problem experienced by one of the teachers in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). News stories have tight deadlines, and there is much more that we have learned since the deadline for that story. As the policy coordinator for CLUE I have received multiple replies to questions from Jill Worthy, the superintendent for the district that includes Monarch Park Collegiate.

The site is located at ubuntu-ca.org and sports the groupś new made-in Canada logo.