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. The GoOpen conference, planned for last September but postponed to May 2015, is now cancelled.

Friprog's board decision to close the centre comes two weeks after the Norwegian government announced the end of the annual 4.5 million krone subsidy (about 550 thousand euro). The decision was published as part of the 2015 state budget.

It is the second time the Norwegian government ended Friprog's subsidy. In 2012 the centre managed to persuade the government to continue funding, but not this year. "Our board has decided to close down the centre", Friprog director Morton Amundsen tells the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR). Friprog's staff (3.5 FTE) will be axed.

Surprise

Amundsen says the centre and its board were not notified in advance of the funding cut. The plan had not been mentioned in meetings with the Ministry of Local Government and Modernization, he explains. "We've always told them to warn us in advance. So, their announcement came as a shock."

In its 2015 budget, the Norwegian government writes that its funding for Friprog had always been a start-up grant, and that the centre has had since 2007 to find alternative sources of income.

Go Open

Amundsen says that earlier this year, the centre had explained its initiatives to develop alternative income. The centre wanted to avoid become dependent on ICT service providers, and so developed projects on open education, he says. "We were compiling educational materials from around the globe, tailoring it for schools in Africa."

The Friprog director adds that the planned GoOpen conference had been intended to communicate the progress on free and open source made by other European countries. "Connecting Norway to other European countries would have helped the Norwegian public administration plan its open source strategies. GoOpen would have contributed to the innovation of e-government services and to the reduction of the administrative burden."

More information:

Friprog
Norway's state budget 2015 (pdf, in Norwegian)
Digi.no news item (in Norwegian)
Digi.no oped (in Norwegian
Computerworld news item (in Norwegian)