theinquirer.net: THE THREAT OF REPRISALS from Microsoft lawyers has stopped Becta, the UK's technology quango for schools, from publishing the details of the three-year megadeal it agreed with Microsoft in April.

Also: Microsoft asks EU Commission to let it off the hook

Richard Stallman: To pay so much attention to Bill Gates' retirement is missing the point. What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software companies, imposes on its customers.

linux-watch.com: One of India's 28 states plans to distribute 100,000 Linux laptops to students there. It sounds like Tamil Nadu's volume purchasing agent decided to use Linux exclusively after being put off by Microsoft's bundling tactics for academic users.

workswithu.com: Previously, I introduced my theory of the Difficulty Divide. It’s a concept that I’ve used for several years when talking about why I use Linux, and why some people may give up on it. I also promised that I would present on how I’ve modified it in recent years to reflect the current state of things.

blogs.zdnet.com: It’s a tough call. Observers from both the open and closed source worlds say the exit of Microsoft’s longtime leader won’t usher in a GPL era at the company but it will likely accelerate what is already a changing attitude in Redmond.

eweek.com: At first glance, Bill appears to be an ordinary man. But he is anything but ordinary. What the world would have been like if Gates had never been born.

blogs.computerworld: You gotta love it. Microsoft has decided that it will ho ahead and kill off easy access to XP on June 30th. On behalf of desktop Linux users everywhere, and our first cousins, the Mac fans, thanks. You've given us the best shot we'll ever have of taking the desktop.

inquirer.net: In a presentation by noted IT entrepreneur Winston Damarillo, mentioning indicators that open source is ready for primetime deployment, one answer reads: "The number of times in a month Microsoft says: ‘We support open source.’"

computerworld.com: "Is it the tradition here to give Bill the finger whenever you go through these doors?" — Free software movement leader Richard Stallman, to a student outside Stanford University's Bill Gates Building.

The fight against the adoption of OOXML as an ISO standard is continuing in many countries. In the UK the UK Unix & Open Systems User Group (UKUUG) unsuccessfully, sought a judicial review of the British Standards Institute’s decision to vote yes. UKUUG are now seeking to appeal against that rejection of a review and you can help them.

anotherbloggerbloke.blogspot: Sometimes, certain situations (like this)really support the fact --> never trust anyone called Gates, who sells you Windows. humorix.org has some splendid slogans dug from across the world. A few of my favourites:

• China to sue MSFT over high prices

• Microsoft Monopolistic in the Middle Kingdom?
• Microsoft says it's not aware of any Chinese antitrust probe

pcworld.com: Microsoft has become a sponsor of The Open Source Census, a project started earlier this year that aims to track and catalog the use of open-source software in enterprises worldwide, the group announced Monday.

blog.freeside.fr: Almost 5 years have passed since I erased my Microsoft Windows partitions to switch to Mandriva Linux. However, I try to keep myself informed of what happens in the Windows world, just to be able to help relatives when they're in trouble. Yesterday, I had a Windows box to cure. Here's what I was painfully reminded:

temporaryland.wordpress: The FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) Community knows, thanks to leaked Microsoft internal documents, that since about 1998 Microsoft has been in a sort of war against them. Because of this, it is not surprising that the FOSS community has looked at Microsoft with suspicion and has vilified it to no end. But, is Microsoft really evil?