|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Open Source Observatory (OSOR) newsletter
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
follow us :
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A responsibility for essential free and open source software
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Members of the open source user and developer communities have been living in a somewhat polarised world for a while. On the one side is the Free Software Foundation (FSF), propagating the idea that software should be freely available for anyone to run, study, modify and redistribute. Solutions built on free software published under the GPL and other copyleft licences can only be distributed granting the same rights to the user, which means that this software can not be used in closed source software.
On the other side are the pragmatists from the Open Source Initiative (OSI), who favour the use of permissive (BSD-style) licenses that allow anyone to use the software in their own solutions, without any requirements other than attribution to the original. Their idea is that open source software functions as an approachable alternative and a gateway to free software.
Despite coming from a different angle, the two camps nowadays have found common ground. Their merit is the existence of two complementary open source licencing models. Copyleft licences protect developers from free riders, while permissive licences allow companies to incorporate open source software into their products and services.
Non-competitive and non-distinctive software
For commercial companies and privatised/semi government organisations this means that market pressure will force them to divide their software use and production into a competitive and distinctive part on the one hand and a generic part on the other. For the competitive part, only permissively licenced open source software can be incorporated into their own closed source productions. All free and open source software can be used for the generic part, typically developed as open source software in an industry consortium or another type of partnership. For example, the two largest European electricity transmission system operators, RTE and TenneT, are working jointly on open-source solutions as members of Linux Foundation Energy. "In the smart grid all players take part," TenneT wrote in its open source strategy. "An open market demands open software. TenneT has a public task and is focused on lowering cost for society. Open source provides opportunities to lower software costs."
A similar case can be built for government organisations, for which almost all software production and use is non-competitive. Interoperability, cost reduction, cost sharing and transparency are the main drivers to go open source for the World Bank Group, the Belgian, Swedish, and Finnish governments, and the German state of Thuringia. The call from the Spanish Air Force for a Linux distribution with a very long lifespan of 30 years provides another example of a software asset that may very well be developed in an open public-private collaboration.
A commons
All this implies that governments, apart from their own software use and production, have a larger responsibility. That includes governance and funding for essential free and open source software that is part of the shared economic and societal infrastructure (a commons). This line of thinking is also part of the European Commission's EU-FOSSA project, which has extended its focus from critical open source software used at EC institutions to widely used open source software.
|
|
|
|
|
Latest News
|
|
|
|
France’s public services increasingly contribute to open source
|
|
|
|
Agriculture, aviation, culture, finance, justice, education, and treasury: from across France’s public services, software developers are committing code to publicly hosted open source projects. An analysis of commits and pull requests for the open source projects hosted on GitHub, a public code repository, shows that it’s increasingly common for France’s public services to code in the open.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Germany's BSI responsible for further development of Mailvelope
|
|
|
|
The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has invested in the further development of Mailvelope, an open source browser plugin for end-to-end encryption of webmail and web forms.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Electronic Register of Common Land for Wales to launch in 2022
|
|
|
|
In order to comply with the Welsh Government’s digital-first approach and further enable the implementation of the Commons Act 2006, the current paper-based registers and associated maps will be transformed to an electronic register of common land for Wales. OSGeo open source tools will be put forward which enable online browsing of the registers by Commoners and enhance efficiency for the Common Registration Officers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Italy’s top financial inspectors to include public sector software reuse in their audits
|
|
|
|
Italy’s Court of Audit (Corte dei conti), which monitors public finances, will be including in its audits the savings generated by all of the country’s public services that share software created by or for them. The reasoning is that public services that do not share software solutions prevent others from reusing them, and so increase the costs to society. This is one of several newly introduced checks that focus on government digitalisation.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The French Ministry of the Interior opts for an open source software, Nextcloud
|
|
|
|
Nextcloud announced that its open source solution will now power the French Ministry of Interior, which favours a European open source alternative for its cloud needs instead of a large American, centralised solution.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Europe’s public services looking for Python developers
|
|
|
|
Searching for current public tenders requiring Python on TED, the procurement portal of the EU Official Journal, delivers fascinating examples of public services across Europe that use or want to use the open source programming language.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Valencia continues its support for Linux school distro
|
|
|
|
The government of Valencia, one of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities, is continuing to support the use of open source in schools. LliureX, a collection of open source software solutions tailored for use in schools and based on the Ubuntu Linux distribution, is implemented on more than 120,000 workstations, reports the region’s finance ministry.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Russia scrapped open source plans to focus on self-reliance
|
|
|
|
The Russian Federation aims to rid its public services of reliance on foreign software suppliers. The objectives are for Russia to gain control over the software that is uses, and to create independent and economically beneficial solutions. The policy is a roadblock to using open source, says one of the country’s open source advocates.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
New Finnish government to promote open source
|
|
|
|
The new government of Finland, formally appointed on 6 June, will promote the use of open source software for public services’ IT systems. The preference for open source, open (programming) interfaces and open data is part of the Government Programme that was published on 3 June.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
European TSO's go open source in building the smart electricity grid
|
|
|
|
RTE and TenneT, the two largest European electricity transmission system operators (TSOs), will discuss their digitalisation and open source strategies in a webinar on 8 August 2019. Both operators are members of Linux Foundation Energy (LF Energy), a coalition of IT and energy organisations and research institutes working jointly on open-source solutions for innovation and transition.
We recognise that open source is the commodity foundation upon which the entire IT industry rests, Loek Bakker, Head of the CIO Office of TenneT, writes in a blog post. For TenneT, like many other utilities, open source is essential to our strategic success.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Analysis of the state of play of Open Source policies in EU Member States
|
|
|
|
At the beginning of 2019, the European Commission (Directorate-General for Informatics, Interoperability Unit) finalised a study to define the new vision and strategy of OSOR. The study highlighted the need of the community for more country intelligence in the domain of open source software. Hence, as of September 2019, the OSOR collection will foster the Information Observatory services, by providing insights on all EU Member States in the domain of open source software.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Latest Studies
|
|
|
|
|
Taiwanese government standardises on true ODF document format
|
|
|
|
The Taiwanese model, in which policies require that documents generated by office productivity tools truly adhere to the ODF standard, can serve as an example to EU governments. It proves the strong relation there is between interoperability, open standards and open-source software.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
'Buy from startups' strategy pays off for City of Antwerp
|
|
|
|
A new administrative coalition has forced Digipolis Antwerp to rethink its procurement policy. In 2015 the City of Antwerp reorganised its ICT architecture from silo-based systems dependent on large suppliers to a modular approach, for which the re-usable components are provided by a network of startup companies.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Upcoming Events
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Latest Software
|
|
|
|
Skills Profile Tool
|
|
|
|
The EU Skills Profile Tool for Third Country Nationals, is an online questionnaire in the format of a CV to assist national authorities and relevant services to identify and document skills of Third Country Nationals. It aims to facilitate the integration of TCNs in the labour market by supporting the identification and documentation of their skills and work experience. The Tool is available in all EU official languages (apart from Gaelic) and in Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, Somali, Sorani, Tigrinya and Turkish – the main languages of refugees receiving asylum in Europe. The questions are displayed in two languages at the same time on one screen, reducing language barriers between caseworkers and the TCN.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
About Website Evidence Collector
|
|
|
|
The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) publishes the tool Website Evidence Collector under the European Union Public License (EUPL-1.2). The tool supports the automation of privacy and personal data protection inspections of websites. The EDPS welcomes any feedback and suggestions for improvements to be sent to: edps-it-policy@edps.europa.eu
The tool collects evidence of personal data processing, such as cookies, or requests to third parties. The collection parameters are configured ahead of the inspection and then collection is carried out automatically. The collected evidence, structured in a human- and machine-readable format, allows website controllers, data protection officers and end users to understand better which information is transferred and stored during a visit of a website, i.e. the consecutive loading of a number of web pages without giving consent or logging in.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
midPoint
|
|
|
|
Change is inevitable in life, in business as well. New projects and tasks are created everyday, furthermore the organization and company is performing like big organism where employees are changing their positions and project roles. All of it brings transformation of business processes, new business rules, policies and active organizational structures. To keep all of information up to date and secure is more than important.
From technical point of view it is needed to set up approval processes, synchronize data, integrate systems, format and transformate data, set protocols leading to speeding up IT processes and with efficiency cut IT costs. It is needed to let identity management and identity governance run a dialogue. The way how to manage it is called midPoint.
MidPoint is unique open source solution combining identity management and identity governance. It covers technological and business requirements.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Follow 
Join 
Join the 
