If you are one of the few unfortunate blokes that’s pulling your hair out over random File Menu popups on OpenOffice — Word or Spreadsheet — and have been hitting your head against a brick wall trying to find the solution, I hear you.

I intially thought there was some interaction with Skype, but now I have to retract that statement. In all honesty, I have no clue what the problem is.

But I decided to just watch the “random” File Menu problem and time it. And now I am more confused than ever.

On my computer running 64-bit Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic), I noticed that the File Menu toggles twice a second when OpenOffice has the focus. One toggle event happens precisely on the 11th second; the other toggle event happens around 35th to the 45th second. The second toggle seems to be related to when I launch OpenOffice; the first is always precisely on the 11th second.

And this is something peculiar to …

Government adoption. Financial results. New funding. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

For the latest on Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL via Sun, see Everything you always wanted to know about MySQL but were afraid to ask

Government approval
The US Department of Defense issued guidance on the adoption of open source software, while ComputerWorld reported that the U.S Department of Defense has open-sourced an …

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post titled Dear IBM , I was too late .. I was on holliday last week when people started sending me text messages , such as .. "Game Over MySQL , Long live Ingress" or "No Eclipse for IBM", etc ...

I had ideas regarding the future of certain Sun products at IBM, now the game has changed .. it'ss how they will live on at Oracle :)

Similar Questions arise .. like indeed the future of MySQL, the future of Solaris etc ...

So regarding the future of MySQL , I don't worry at all, on the contrary ..
Oracle tried buying mysql before they already have Innodb .. they didn't kill it .. the MySQL offering is complementary to the Oracle offering, now they can tackle both markets.
And as already mentionned when writing my IBM letter ..

As for MySQL, Jeremey has some good insights.. the fact that …

Today, Dinesh pointed us out to the fact that MAMPU/OSCC saves RM40 million with open source. That’s about USD$12 million dollars!

I quote, from the report:

Savings on licensing fee alone by adopting OpenOffice.org have already exceeded RM12 million, which is based on the total installed seats of 12,760 at public sector agencies.

Also, from the same report:

The top three applications being considered by most Public Sector Agencies are:
1. OpenOffice.org – Office Suite
2. Firefox – Web Browser
3. MySQL – Database using Open Source Technology

That is impressive. OpenOffice.org and MySQL both come from Sun Microsystems Inc. Of course I’ve known this for a long time coming, but seeing it in B&W (ok, a colour report!) is of course, most useful. Go …

This year's Systems trade fair will take place from October 21st-24th in Munich, Germany. Sun will be present there with a stand in the exhibition area (Hall B2, Stand 329) and we also sponsor a conference themed "Perspective Open Source" that will provide half-day sessions (in German) about opensource-related topics throughout the week.

Some highlights of what we'll present on our stand:

• MySQL
• Sun Fire Servers (with Intel Xeon Processors)
• Open Storage …

This year's Systems trade fair will take place from October 21st-24th in Munich, Germany. Sun will be present there with a stand in the exhibition area (Hall B2, Stand 329) and we also sponsor a conference themed "Perspective Open Source" that will provide half-day sessions (in German) about opensource-related topics throughout the week.

Some highlights of what we'll present on our stand:

• MySQL
• Sun Fire Servers (with Intel Xeon Processors)
• Open Storage …

Dana Blankenhorn asks whether open source is hurt by piracy, prompted by comments made by Louis Suarez-Potts, Sun’s community manager for OpenOffice.org at OSCON.

Dana is unconvinced that open source supporters should necessarily be doing anything about piracy, noting that “There is no direct financial loss to Open Office when someone has a pirated copy of Microsoft Office. To the extent that BSA enforcement actions cause fear in the market, that just benefits open source, so why join it?”

He also notes that “On the other hand if we helped Oracle enforce its license terms we might accelerate the move to MySQL and Ingres.”

However, one need only remember …

De facto standards are the only ones that matter.

That's a bit of a truism in the technology world - well intentioned standards bodies and departments of justice can do their best, but at the end of the day, volume deployment is the only setter of standards. Ubiquity trumps policy, just about every time.

To that point, I was on a panel recently, discussing the impact of technology on the world's more rapidly developing economies (what's often referred to as "BRICA," or Brazil, Russia, India, China and Africa).

One of the speakers referenced an interesting shift in the traditional media industry: western companies were turning their attention toward the developing world. GDP growth wasn't drawing their attention - as much as demographics. Teenagers and those in their early twenties represent the biggest media buyers in …