The EU has announced that it's not going to use patented software standards unless it gets an irrevocable royalty-free license to all the patents in the standard — guess that means Windows is out!
European Commission's IDA (Interchange of Data between Administrations) Unit announced their definition of Open Standards, which require the "intellectual property – i.e. patents possibly present – of (parts of) the standard to be made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis". It also calls for "no constraints on the re-use of the standard" to be imposed. The definition is part of the European Interoperability Framework just published at http://europa.eu.int/ida/servlets/Doc?id=18063
Among other speakers, Christian Hardy from the French ministry of finance presented the large migration of over 100 000 desktops to OpenOffice, the free software alternative to Microsoft Office, across the national French Administration. Rolf Theodor Schuster, CIO at the German Foreign Ministry presented a live demonstration of the fully open source desktop and server system that secures the global German embassy network.
(Thanks, Rishab!)
Update: Rishab sez, "note that the interoperability framework is not mandatory! but the volume of protests from e.g. COMPTIA indicates that it will be influential."
