Newsletter of the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR)
November 2014
The OSOR Newsletter keeps you updated on Europe's public sector's use of free and open source software solutions.
Have an enjoyable read — and visit us at Open Source Observatory!
Aspiring sharing and reuse
We're encouraged to see the successful use of crowdfunding to get new features into free and open source tools. The Swiss Wilhelm Tux initiative featured in this month's newsletter is supported by the government-owned Swiss Post. Perhaps this approach will become a regular tool for public administrations working towards free and open source solutions.
Crowdfunding can help draw attention to solutions and it creates opportunities for public administrations to work together, across administrative and even national borders. Laudably, Swiss, German, and French public administrations have likewise pooled budgets to make new software solutions possible and publicly available.
Crowdfunding could complement business models proven by open source projects such as OpenMairie, Frikomport and eBourgogne. These public administrations, they're on to something.
Latest News | View all news articles
Swiss crowdfund pays for signed PDFs LibreOffice |
Dutch Parliament urges increase of open source |
| In just three days, the Swiss open source community Wilhelm Tux reached its crowdfunding target of 10,000 CHF (about 8000 euro) to add support for digital signatures in PDF documents. The feature will be added to LibreOffice, a free and open source suite of office productivity tools. | The Dutch government must increase its use of open source software, recommends the country's parliament. It wants to make open standards mandatory and use open source when equal to or better than proprietary solutions for all ICT projects over 5 million euro. |
| Read More | Read More |
| ‘Albania hospitals should switch to open source’ [Albania] |
| The government of Albania should benefit from using free and open source for managing the country’s hospitals and health clinics, says Gjergj Sheldija. |
| Free software groups hopeful for new Commission [Europe] |
| Free software advocacy groups are hopeful that the incoming European Commission will advance the use and development of this type of software solution in public administration. |
| Paris extends smart city open source tools to region [France] |
| The French capital is pushing for the use of free and open source software solutions to extend its smart city project to the city region. |
| European Greens RFC: ‘Transparency implies use of open source’ [Europe] |
| The Greens/European Free Alliance in the European Parliament want to find out for once and for all if the use of free and open source software is essential for the democratic institution. |
| Munich’s return to proprietary desktop would cost millions [Germany] |
| The return to proprietary desktop PCs would cost the city of Munich millions, estimates Dieter Reiter, Mayor of Munich. |
| Norway closes its open source resource centre [Norway] |
| The government of Norway will no longer fund its open source resource centre, Friprog. Activities are wound down and the centre will be closed at the end of the year, Friprog reports. |
| Open source central to e-health project Danish Syddjurs [Denmark] |
| Open source and HL7, an open standard for healthcare IT solutions, are key elements in a tender for an e-health telemedicine project to be implemented at the Danish municipality of Syddjurs. |
| Still more open source in Sweden's Alingsås [Sweden] |
| Strengthened by experience, the Swedish municipality of Alingsås is increasingly turning to open source solutions, announced Göran Westerlund, head of the municipal IT department. |
| Linux clusters in German finance ministry data centre [Germany] |
| The shared IT service centre for Germany's federal government (ZIVIT) has awarded a 10 million euro support contract for open source software, it announced on 8 October. |
| Nearly all of Romania’s universities use Moodle [Romania] |
| The vast majority (85 percent) of Romania’s 105 universities are now using Moodle, an open source e-learning platform, reports the country’s Moodle community manager, Herman Cosmin. |
| Open source streamlines pension system Croatia [Croatia] |
| Using open source software allows Croatia to connect its e-government services, making disparate systems interoperable. |
Latest Studies | View all studies
Complex singularity versus openness |
London split over open platforms |
| Open source impeded by incompatibilities and inconsistencies in the Office Open XML document format | Open source software was ostensibly a primary means for the Greater London Authority (GLA) to achieve its goals. |
| Read more | Read more |
Upcoming Events | View all events
LibreCon 2014 |
fOSSa 2014 |
| LibreCon focusses on the creation of businesses and employment in all sectors of society by using open source technologies, innovation and entrepreneurship. | The 2014 fOSSA conference will take a good look at the role of open source in the world of cryptocurrencies. |
| 11 - 12 November, Bilbao, Spain | 19 - 21 November, Rennes, France |
| Read more | Read more |
| Capitole du Libre 2014 | 15 - 16 November, Toulouse, France |
| Apachecon Europe 2014 | 17 - 21 November, Budapest, Hungary |
| Sambruk Conference | 17 November, Stockholm, Sweden |
| 10th ODF Plugfest | 8 - 10 December, London, United Kingdom |
Latest software | View all interoperability solutions
| CudadaniaEuropea-Liberado | Dispa-SET |
| This is the code that enabled www.CiudadaniaEuropea.es, a website (and set of mobile apps) built for the Management Partnership between the European Commission and the Spanish Government. | The Dispa-SET model is a unit commitment and dispatch model developed within the “Joint Research Centre” and focused on the balancing and flexibility problems in European grid. |
Joinup platform statistics
Due to errors following April's update of the Joinup platform, not all numbers are available. Sorry.
| Number of visitors in October: | 226,335 |
| Number of projects downloaded in October: | 1399 |
| Total number of Software Projects on Joinup: | 353 |
| Total Number of Federated Software Projects: | x |
| New users that registered in October | 2797 |
| Total number of users: | 33601 |
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The Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR) is part of the Joinup collaborative platform. Joinup is created by the European Commission and funded by the European Union via the Interoperability Solutions for Public Administrations (ISA) Programme. OSOR and Joinup help e-Government professionals share their experience with interoperability solutions and support them to find, choose, re-use, develop, and implement open source software and semantic interoperability assets.
Feel free to forward this newsletter to any other interested persons, and to send us your comments and suggestions. We welcome your contributions and we invite you to send in news items, announcements for events and other stories related to free and open source software and of interest to public administrations to the email address mentioned below. Moreover, if you belong to a public authority or a public sector organisation and would be interested in being the subject of a case study for best practices regarding open source software, please contact us here.
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