Stories by: John Blau

Theseus, the German government-funded program to develop new semantic Web technologies, will launch a competition in November to attract talented software programmers, including experts from the open-source community.

Universal Music Group (UMG) is the latest major music label to offer music downloads without copy protection.

The Green Party is accusing the Berlin city government of lacking a coherent IT strategy and thus not being in a position to adequately judge the merits of open-source software.

Google is unhappy with proposed German legislation to ban anonymous e-mail accounts and may consider dropping the German version of its Gmail service.

Reorganization reflects the growing importance of Nokia's multimedia and Internet-enabled devices businesses.

Consumers planning to buy the iPhone when it goes on sale in the U.S. later this month will need to have an iTunes Store account before they can activate the device, according to information on Apple's Web site.

Hackers may want to avoid Germany, after the approval of a law that makes their activity a punishable crime.

Ubuntu Linux developers plan to extend its open-source software development to handheld Internet-enabled devices.

The German federal government in Berlin, which is an advocate for open-source software in the public sector, may have some lobbying to do at its own front door.

An initiative backed by industry giants Intel and Nokia aims to increase the development and use of open source software in mobile phones.

The U.S. military plan to test an Internet router in space, in a project that could also benefit civilian broadband satellite communications.