The council of the Swiss capital of Bern on 12 November ordered the IT department to end its dependence on proprietary software. The council halved the city’s request for a six-year licence contract, and insisted on an exit plan. A majority of councillors wants the city to replace proprietary software by open source solutions, such … Read more
Every day, governments and government agencies publish more data on the Internet. Sharing this data enables greater transparency; delivers more efficient public services; and encourages greater public and commercial use and re-use of government information. Some governments have even created catalogs or portals (such as data.gov) to make it easy for the public to find … Read more
The European Parliament calls upon the Commission for the systematic replacement of proprietary software by auditable and verifiable open-source software in all the EU institutions, and for the introduction of a mandatory open-source-selection criterion in all future ICT procurement procedures. The Parliament strongly reiterates its call for the development, within the framework of new initiatives … Read more
From scientific research to lawmaking, open access enables participation Open access is the practice of making research available online, for free, ideally under licenses that permit widespread dissemination. This year’s theme for Open Access Week is “open for collaboration,” and that theme hits on what’s really exciting about open access. Open access—both in academia and … Read more
France’s policies on open source and open data are helping to create a market for French ICT service providers, says Didier Tranchier, Professor of Innovation Management at Institut Mines-Telecom, a research institute. Professor Tranchier, who coaches and invests in high tech companies, spoke at the Mindtrek OpenMind conference in Tampere (Finland) in September. “Open data, … Read more
The vast majority of EU officials who publish documents online are oblivious to the EU’s open document formats policy. One year after the launch of the ‘FixMyDocuments’ campaign, advocates of open document formats conclude the policy is perceived as unimportant. “There is a huge lack of awareness”, says campaign organiser Maël Brunet. “Maintainers show little … Read more
Open source code is supposed to reduce redundancy by saving developers from reinventing the wheel. To help it do a better job of that, the Linux Foundation this week announced a new OpenChain Workgroup, a new initiative that aims to standardize common practices to make open source more efficient. The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit consortium … Read more
Open Invention Network (OIN), the largest patent non-aggression community in history, is marking its 10 year anniversary this fall. Since its founding in 2005, Open Invention Network has grown its community to over 1,700 participants – from sizable multinational companies to key open source projects to emerging businesses. OIN has expanded its strategic patent portfolio … Read more
The European Commission aims to primarily use open source tools for developing software that is distributed publicly, shows an overview on open source adoption that was presented last week by the EC’s Directorate General of Informatics (DIGIT) at a conference in Tampere (Finland). Already much of the EC’s own software is developed using open source. … Read more
Can the principles and practices of Linux be transferred to other industries? We at The Linux Foundation certainly think so and apparently so does the industry. Over the last few years every major technology category has been taken over by open source. Many of those Foundations and projects are being hosted at The Linux Foundation … Read more
