One thing I’ve yet to really catch up on this week is the second Phase of the World Summit on the Information Society which was held in Tunis last week. The Dag Hammarsköld Library mentions that there is a Tunis committment. More WSIS information in a variety of languages, official WSIS site and IFLA address in French or English.

The unveiling of MIT’s proposed One Laptop Per Child ($100 laptop) project is probably the most widely publicised initiative to be formally announced in Tunis (though the actual project has been in the works for some years now).

There were also some interesting comments made about FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) -

Patent laws should be reformed to support and not discourage innovation, participants said. They called on the United Nations to take a leading role in fostering productive open source partnerships, to liberate the poor and empower them to use technology for social and economic development. Governments, they urged, must be cognizant of the benefits offered by FOSS, and reflect these principles in their procurement policies.