FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels.
More than 80 organisations involved in open source software wrote an open letter to the Council of the EU and the European Commission expressing their concerns on the new Copyright Directive as it is currently proposed. According to the signatories, Article 13 in particular will cause irreparable damage to their fundamental rights and freedoms, their economy and competitiveness, their education and research, their innovation and competition, their creativity and their culture.
The German trade fair organiser Deutsche Messe and the Basque Country open source trade group ESLE will jointly organise the next two LibreCon events, in November 2018 and 2020. The organisations aim to boost the “international positioning of the Basque open source technologies sector,” a press release said.
Early next year, the government of Greenland will make available as open source the software for its new Grunddata public records system. The source code will most likely be published on GitHub, says Morten Kjærsgaard, CEO of Magenta, the Danish software specialist contracted to develop and implement the system.
UK government public services must consider the use of open source software when designing, building and buying technology. Public services must also consider sharing the source code publicly.
The city of Munich is preparing to switch 18,500 workstations running Linux to proprietary operating systems over the next 2 to 4 years, in an renewed attempt to centralise the city’s 22 IT departments. A plan detailing the costs and consequences of changing the suite of office productivity tools will reach the city council later next year. In the meantime, the city will continue to use LibreOffice.
Forty websites managed by Italian public services, from schools and towns to key eGovernment services, are testing the use of Piwik, an open source software solution for analysing patterns in website traffic. If the test is successful, a centrally managed Piwik service will be made available to all of Italy’s public sector.
The city of Paris advocates the use of free and open source software by public services. This does not necessarily lower costs, the French authorities say, but it allows the capital’s public services to stay in control and make ICT fit their needs.
Software developers working for the governments of Canada and the Netherlands are working to join their government’ collaboration portals, GCconnex/GCcollab and Pleio respectively. Both platforms are available as open source, and developers have started working on software projects that should benefit both portals.
The City of Barcelona is migrating its computer systems away from the Windows platform, so reports the Spanish newspaper El País. The City's strategy is first to replace all user applications with open-source alternatives, until the underlying Windows operating system is the only proprietary software remaining. In a final step, the operating system will be replaced with Linux.
Bulgaria’s State e-Government Agency (SEGA) has started to build its national open source software repository in which it intends to share all software written for and by public services. In the meantime SEGA is sharing the first 14 projects on GitHub, which will later act as a software mirror.
In November, the Spanish government published as open source the code for its open data platform data.gob.es. The portal combines the Drupal content management system with CKAN open data repository software and seven CKAN extensions developed by the Spanish government.
France leads the European open source market, with penetration in IT services and software higher than that of other countries, says the French company Pierre Audoin Consultants in a survey published during the Paris Open Source Summit.
The European Commission is holding an Info Session on the "Mobilising Research Excellence in EU Outermost Regions" in Horizon 2020 where the SwafS-22-2018 call for 2018 will be presented.
The European Commission today launched a Horizon Prize in Social Innovation to improve the mobility of older people. The prize has a budget of €2 million and is funded under Horizon 2020, the EU's research and innovation programme. One prize of €1 million and four runner-up prizes of €250,000 each will be awarded to the most innovative mobility solutions that enable older citizens to continue to fully participate in social activities, maintain their autonomy and age healthily. Carlos Moedas,
The European Commission has launched a new online presentation of implementation data of Horizon 2020, the EU's research and innovation programme. The Horizon 2020 Dashboard is user-friendly but at the same time offers powerful new analytical functions that will inform programme reporting, impact analysis, feedback to policy-making as well as decisions on future priorities.
Today, the European Commission awarded the 2017 European Capital of Innovation (iCapital) prize of €1,000,000 to Paris. The award, granted under the EU's research and innovation programme Horizon 2020, recognises Paris for its inclusive innovation strategy. Tel Aviv and Tallinn were selected as runners-up, and were both awarded €100,000.
A fundamentally new concept for remote control of cellular functions by means of magnetic manipulation for treatment of neurodegenerative disorders will be introduced by the FET-Open project MAGNEURON.
i-PROGNOSIS is an EU-funded multiscope research project aiming to provide technology-based solutions against Parkinson’s. Their latest mobile app was presented at the 'eHealth Tallinn 2017' conference and offers opportunities for health professionals to detect subtle changes that neurologists cannot perceive in consultations.
