A school I do some work for is sponsoring a school in Africa, and they asked me to help them get a MS-Windows PC, but I didn't. I gently but firmly steered them to an open source *NIX, explaining both the technical and social advantages of open source and my take on African Debt. 'I can't solve the …

Tony Bove's Just Say No To Microsoft looks like a good tool for helping teach your friends and colleagues why they should stop using Microsoft products and how to go about doing so. I'll be doing a full review real soon now.

Right after my comments on David Wheeler's 'important essay detailing the reasons why it is important not to let your data ... get locked into proprietary formats', OpenOffice.org announced the final release of OpenOffice.org 2.0. Get it. Use it. Don't spend another penny on software that locks you …

David Wheeler has an important essay detailing the reasons why it is important not to let your data (or your citizens', if 'you' are a government department) get locked into proprietary formats, even Microsoft 'open' proprietary formats. Read this and find out why the State of Massachusetts, …