Open Source Observatory

OSOR

A new report on Open Data and Open Source Software has been published by the French parliament. The report was led by MP Eric Botherel and it proposes the creation of an Open Source Program Office in the French government. Furthermore, the report has been backed by several national FOSS players.

Under the pressure of increased population, greening initiatives and technological progress, mobility in cities is fast evolving. The Open Mobility Foundation (OMF) was founded to help shape this process between cities and mobility operators.

In creating a Smart City, it is necessary to create transparency in the public debate. Multiple digital solutions address this need for increased transparency, including the open source platforms Consul and Decidim. Both aim to stimulate the democratic process and transparency between public administration, politicians, and citizens.

The city is a vast and complex ecosystem. Digital transformation lifts this ecosystem into the virtual domain. Yet, without structure, this vast amount of data is useless. The European Commission’s Context Broker, developed under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), helps turn raw data into analysable information.

On 8 December 2020, The Things Network (TTN) added two new communities to its portfolio. With the three new gateways that the two communities hold together, TTN now has 15.840 open source gateways in its network, covering 150 countries globally. The new cities are Pamplona in Spain and Oradea in Romania. Both are still missing a number of percentage points to become full members. The score depends on the number of gateways in the community, the existence of internal communication channels, exposure, and registered members.

A white paper from the Internet Society identifies open source as a way of increasing competition in the internet platform market through interoperability. That open source plays an important role in enabling interoperability between systems and services is an established aspect in digital policy discussions. It is, for example, present in almost all digital government strategies of the last few years. Now, in their white paper, ‘Considerations for Mandating Open Interfaces’, the Internet Society makes a link between interoperability through open source and the much-discussed concerns around competition in the digital platforms market.

A new report on a survey of over 1,200 open source contributors has been published as a part of a bigger research on improving security and sustainability of open source software. What are the most urgent issues related to open source security and maintenance? How to improve reliability of the most important open source projects that are cornerstones of the modern digital infrastructure? These are some of the questions that the researchers from The Linux Foundation’s Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) and the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH) were trying to answer.

A report from the Architecture Working Group of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) recommends that all research software should be made available under an open source license by default. The Task Force arrives at a clear and distinct policy recommendation: “all research software should be made available under an open source license by default, and all deviations from this default practice should be properly motivated”. In terms of specific actions, the task force recommends including this clause in all future research funding programs.

Digitransit is journey planner developed by the Finnish Traffic Management Group. The software solution uses geolocation tools to locate users on a map and inform them of their nearest lines, stops and transport routes in real- time, filtering out unnecessary information.

iA.Urban is a solution for optimising and facilitating the management of requests that are made to the urban planning and environmental authorities of public administrations. The software gives users a clear oversight of ongoing procedures and relevant deadlines, provides document templates, access cartographic data, generate personalised reports, and much more.

FixMyStreet is a U.K. application based on Open Street Map that allows users to report environmental problems in their area to their local public administration. Whether it is a case of broken street lights, illegal dumping, or graffiti...users simply have to locate the problem on a map of the area, fill out an online form detailing the issue and then it is sent to the local public administration.

The EOLE aims to promote the sharing and dissemination of legal knowledge related to free and open source software (FOSS) licences, as well as the development and promotion of good practices in the field. This event session is focussed on open source governance within public administrations and will feature a variety of speakers. OSOR will be presenting its work on the Country Intelligence Reports, with a particular focus on the findings in relation to the governance of open source software across Europe.

On 28 January, Univention will host their annual summit online. This year’s focus is on digital sovereignty for the education sector, governments and companies, and will place emphasis on a variety of open source projects that are encouraging digital sovereignty in these domains. Presentations on the day will address a variety of topics, including digital collaboration, open source in schools, digital sovereignty in public administration, and more. The presentations will take place in a mixture of English and German.

On 4 February 2021, the Latvian Open Technologies Association (LATA) will be hosting their 14th Annual Conference titled “How to Stay Open in the New Era”. The event will feature a broad variety of speakers presenting diverse topics from the open technologies’ world and the presentation of the annual LATA awards.

Between 10-12 February, FOSS Backstage will be taking place in a fully online, interactive environment. The conference is dedicated to free and open source software governance and open collaboration and aims to foster discussions on a variety of topics. The event is targeted at developers, architects, system administrators, community leaders, students and anyone else interested in open source software.