Pushing open source software nowadays has mainly become an issue of facilitating, implementing and interconnecting. Long gone are the days of the Total-Cost-of-Ownership (TCO) wars between proprietary vendors and open source proponents, the spread of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt and even calling Linux and open source software 'communism' and a 'cancer'. It may take two decades for reality to unwarp, but in the end the laws of economics prevail.

Looking at the latest OSOR news items, we see with satisfaction that a fair amount of the coverage is about clearing legal and practical obstacles from the road, and confirming and intensifying existing principles and policies. Many organisations are already reaping the benefits of open source in the form of sharing, reuse and interoperability.

At the same time, the fact that open source is becoming an important part of our educational and research ecosystem will secure its further growth and cement its long-lasting advantages to our society and institutions.

In the mid-term this will lead to strong growth in local innovation, with high-value businesses and jobs replacing the export of licence fees and limited-value deployments of proprietary systems developed on another continent.

As part of this changing world, the Open Source Observatory is currently being realigned to better support public administrations in the use of open source software. Many thanks to all of you who took the 'Future of OSOR' survey. As a second step, we are organising a workshop on 12 March: you are more than welcome to join us here, to make your opinion part of our new vision and strategy. So, see you there!