OGP is much more than Action Plans, Commitments, Policies and Best Practices. OGP is a powerful network of motivated people with a common goal, to drive a revolution around the world to make governments more open, accountable and responsive to citizens. As the case of my country Greece shows, this common goal is of even […]

The French administration is still a large enabler of Free Software in France. According to a survey published by Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC , CXP group), a French consulting company, the public sector is seen as an opportunity for Free Software for 71% of the more than 100 companies surveyed in this study, mostly members […]

Both types of data can transform the world, but when government turns big data into open data it’s especially powerful  Big data and the new phenomenon open data are closely related but they’re not the same. Open data brings a perspective that can make big data more useful, more democratic, and less threatening. While big […]

“Open Educational Resources Policy in Europe” is a project that brings together a coalition of international experts to strengthen the implementation of open education policies across Europe. It aims to take advantage of the current high profile of open education in Europe, demonstrated by developments such as the explicit mention of Open Educational Resources (OER) […]

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 […]

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, […]

The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International and Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licenses are now on our list of free licenses for works of practical use besides software and documentation. We have updated our list of Various Licenses and Comments about Them to include the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0) and the Creative […]

Save the date!  The annual Fair Use Week, a celebration of the important doctrines of fair use and fair dealing, will take place from February 22-26, 2016. What is Fair Use Week? Each day teachers teach, students learn, researchers advance knowledge, and consumers access copyrighted information due to copyright limitations and exceptions such as fair use […]

The UK government on 7 September published recommendations and guidelines on the use and implementation of ODF, the Open Document Format. The compendium is authoritative, from its general introduction to the recommendations on procurement, a guide on integration of ODF with enterprise software, software that allows collaborating on documents and a review of ODF’s change […]

Open source software is software whose source code is available for modification or enhancement by anyone. “Source code” is the part of software that most computer users don’t ever see; it’s the code computer programmers can manipulate to change how a piece of software—a “program” or “application”—works. Programmers who have access to a computer program’s […]