There is an article in ITBusiness.ca by Grant Buckler talking about Open Source telephony software such as Asterisk and SIPx. It includes discussion of an industry panel that had unsurprising mixed reviews. As vendors of telephony systems, some of what Open Source offers can come in direct competition with what they offer.

An ITBusines.ca article by Sarah Lysecki includes:

A B.C. post-secondary institution said it intends to grow the number of Linux machines in its data centre as it replaces older hardware infrastructure with blade servers.

Vancouver Community College made the switch to Linux from a mixed environment of NetWare and Windows operating systems one year ago when it purchased IBM blade servers, which came with Linux pre-installed, to replace its aging infrastructure.
...
Because the new system uses browser versus Windows-based forms, Dougan said it will help to make it easier to move towards a Linux desktop environment.

An ITBusiness.ca article by Shane Schick includes:

The Canadian government is planning to use GForge as the starting point for asset management. A Treasury Board director walks us through the process and identifies the applications that will be tackled first.

If you live in Ottawa and want to find out more about this project, you may want to attend a GOSLING Gaggle.

Given the accounts on this site about the approach of Canadian politicians educational officials towards open source in the classroom, it's interesting to see what's happening elsewhere. A recent announcement indicates that the Indian state of Kerala is expediting a move to completely replace MS-Windows with Linux in its 12,500 high schools, serving about 1.5 million students.

While the InformationWeek article does talk about Unix/Linux in general as the top entry of its 12 greatest software programs of all time, it singles out BSD4.3 as the heart of the system's greatness and global significance.

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.

The 2006 Desktop Developers Conference in Ottawa is now over and here is a summary. I was able to attend most of the sessions, but unfortunately not all ("real work" got in the way).

I've been seeing an increasing number of comments suggesting that Microsoft is moving ahead with tools designed to reduce the numbers of unauthorized copies of Windows out there. Blogs such as this one on ZDNet do a good job of describing the possible implementation of this program, which has the potential to shut down a lot of copies of Windows deemed to be illegitimate.

While it's provocatively titled, "Beyond the Open-Source Hype", this article is reasonably balanced. While it does give Miscoroft a little too much benefit of the doubt, it does come to a conclusion I agree with: open source is certainly worth using, but in some cases the expectations from it are a bit overstated.

To me, just the appearance of this issue in a magazine that usually has little to do with IT, offering commentary that "Governments may be wise to choose open source", is one more small victory by itself.