The European Commission, that oft maligned administrative arm of the European Union, has published a handy guide for computer system administrators who are considering whether to migrate operations to open source software (OSS).

The guidelines are meant for member governments, but much of the advice in the 148-page report can be applied to corporate systems.

The term 'open source' refers to software that is free of copyright and that can therefore be amended to suit the particular needs of a user. For operating systems this means Linux or its variants (see www.gnu.org and www.opensource.org for more information).

European governments have been particularly keen not to tie the development of their online services (referred to as e-government services) to commercial operating systems, especially to Microsoft's Windows, for strategic and political reasons.

"There are many reasons for administrations to migrate to OSS," the document states. "These include: the need for open standards for e-government; the level of security that OSS provides, the elimination of forced change, the cost of OSS. All these benefits result in far lower IT costs."

OSS is a "disruptive technology" that "enables a fundamental change to the way organisations provide IT services", says the independent consultants who produced the guidelines for the Commission.

"OSS software costs nothing to install," the authors state. "The issue is where to get support. There are a number of third party support companies as well as the distribution vendors. However if your attitude to IT is 'Who do I sue when things go wrong?', then perhaps OSS is not for you."

Actually consultants such as Forrester have warned that the full costs of doing away with licensed operating systems in favour of OSS are often not considered. The cost of support in systems like Linux can add considerably to the ultimate price, but that is another story. The guidelines are available at www.netproject.com.

Software Is buggy. That's the central theme of the Cooperative Bug Isolation Project, launched by the University of California and Stanford University.

The two universities have released software that will send information about problems in your software to a central site. The information will allow coders to evaluate and fix software in a community-wide effort to wipe out mistakes or problems (bugs) in commonly used software.

All you need to do is install our software and you're ready to go. You don't need to be a programmer in order to participate. Just use your computer as you would normally, according to the instructions.

@EDITRULE:

You are not alone. The billions of 'spam' messages sent through the Internet daily have started to erode users' faith in e-mail communications, according to a report by Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Spam refers to unwanted e-mail sent by advertisers and others seeking your attention. Half of all Internet users in the survey said spam has made them less trusting of all e-mail in general and one in four say they now use e-mail less because of the flood of spam.

The June survey of 1,400 internet users found that most feel helpless in stopping the e-mail blasts. More than half said the flood of spam makes it difficult to find messages they do want.

However about seven percent admitted to buying a product or service that was offered through an unsolicited e-mail. One-third said they had clicked a link to get more information. Two-thirds said they had clicked a link to be removed from a spammer's e-mail list, a response likely to only to generate more spam.

Do not click links on spam messages! This simply confirms to the sender that your e-mail is active and worthy of inclusion on more spam lists. The spammer may even sell your e-mail onwards in a hot list of active e-mails.

Only one person answered my query in last week's column about Radicati estimates that employees will achieve 55 minutes extra work per day this year through the use of wireless e-mail.

Using his AT&T BlackBerry Wireless Handheld, Jamie in Bermuda sent me a message that he is saving an extra 30 minutes a day through wireless e-mail.

"Some days it would be greater," he said. "The answer is that down time becomes email time. I have four emails in the queue to be responded to right now, and when I get a little down time then I will answer them. I now only go to my PC every other day or so. Down time, when waiting for customers, in a meeting and others step out... etc."

Thanks for the message Jamie. Save those minutes!

Contact Ahmed with your comments at editor@offshoreon.com