United Nations recommends Open Source

Well, nothing momentuous here, I think. Just common sense. A UN inspector has recommended the use of open source software for developing countries, which is of course already happening. Brazil, Peru and Venezuela are pretty much converting all of their public institution services to open source, and specifically avoiding proprietary software and closed “standards”. In South Africa, they have an institution of the government whose job is to promote open source. See also: http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/02/20/1389065.htm
There’s no point in paying license fees to big multinational companies, when that money is needed locally. It makes more sense to use free/libre software, which of course isn’t free as in beer, since someone still needs to install, maintain, support and train around that software. But the major difference is that these costs stay within the national boundaries – people and companies can just start offering services around open source. Instead of just funnelling money to multinational companies, users of open source pay to local people and companies, thus creating work opportunities and supporting the local economy.
And it’s quite a lot easier to start developing new software based on current open source products, since you can just grab the source and learn from it. With proprietary software, creating a custom version is nearly impossible. So open source, in addition to enabling service opportunities, also enables development of new software tools that can gain popularity abroad, generating revenue in the form of support services rendered. A good example is Ubuntu GNU/Linux, which is funded by Mark Shuttleworth’s foundation in South Africa, and is gaining popularity as an easy-to-use, easy-to-install desktop Linux environment.
Meanwhile in Europe, Microsoft is getting more trouble from anti-monopoly legistlation, since it refused to include the OpenDocument format into its next release of OpenOffice, but is instead pushing with its own XML-based format, which apparently should have a bound version of C++ in it, which allows for virus authors to invent new nifty ways of creating malware.