freedom

Study and survey on the impact of Open Source Software and Hardware in the EU economy

Fraunhofer ISI and OpenForum Europe are conducting a study for the European Commission which shall investigate in detail the economic impact of Open Source Software (OSS) and Open Source Hardware (OSH) on the European economy. The study should identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges of open source in relevant ICT policies. The Open Source impact … Read more

Free Software is More Reliable!

Apologists for proprietary software like to say, “free software is a nice dream, but we all know that only the proprietary system can produce reliable products. A bunch of hackers just can’t do this.” Empirical evidence disagrees, however; scientific tests, described below, have found GNU software to be more reliable than comparable proprietary software. This … Read more

COVID-19 Hackathons: Only Free Software creates global solutions

Currently we see a lot of hackathons to find tools that help tackle the crisis of pandemic COVID-19. More and more governments and administrations are hosting or funding such hackathons. To make sure that the results of these hackathons can be used globally and adapted locally – that the software can be used, studied, shared … Read more

Raspberry Shake the personal seismograph…

Raspberry Shake is probably the smallest seismograph of its caliber in existence, but don’t let its size fool you.  It can record earthquakes of all magnitudes.  From the vanishingly small blips that are imperceptible to human senses, to the big destructive earthquakes that regularly happen around the world. While the Earth shakes, other exciting activities … Read more

Greece robotics competition targets open source software and hardware

Universities and teachers across Greece are encouraging the country’s young schoolchildren to experiment with open source software and hardware. The Panhellenic Open Robotics Competition also encourages school students and their teachers to work together, and aims to create open educational resources. The competition was launched late last year. At the end of December, the organisers … Read more

Data on open collaboration

Figures on availability of scientific APIs, open code policies, citizen science projects as well as case studies. What is open collaboration? Open scientific collaboration refers to the forms of collaboration in the course of the scientific process that do not fit under open data and open publications. It includes different type of outputs such as open code, … Read more

Code + Create: Bringing refugee and Greek youth to learn & work together

The scope of this project is to teach young people digital skills with the use of open technologies. We have set up two open labs and  have created open educational material (available at elearn.ellak.gr) to provide free courses to mixed classes of refugees and Greek youth. Code+Create has been designed and implemented in partnership between … Read more