Small grants can jump-start open source development projects that are useful for public administrations and schools and universities, a grant program in Italy's Umbria region shows.
The grant program of Umbria's open source competence centre (CCOS) in 2008 approved 46 software development projects, out of 82 submitted. CCOS donated in total 235.000 euro.
Of these 46 projects, 22 resulted in software to be used by schools in the region and 9 created applications for public administrations.
Sixteen projects were given up to four thousand euro, sixteen received between four thousand and six thousand euro and four projects were supported with a grant of eight thousand euro. "This shows you do not need large sums of money to get public administrations and educational institutes started on the open source road", said Osvaldo Gervasi, president of CCOS.
To qualify for the CCOS grant program, projects need to publish their code using an open source licence, promote the use of this type of software and upon completion of the project, make all code and documentation publicly available. The centre will fund between 40 and 70 percent of a software development project, to a maximum of fifteen thousand euro.
This is the second year Umbria disbursed grants to open source projects. In 2007, the region spent 100.000 euro for grants for five projects to build the CCOS itself. For 2009, CCOS will have 200.000 euro available for grants. The list of projects that will be supported will be published in the coming weeks.
The grant program of the Umbria's open source centre was one of five cases presented during a conference on open source in public administrations, organised in Rome last week Wednesday.
All presentations will be made available on the conference website shortly.
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