OSOR has published an update to the Spain Country Intelligence report, highlighting recent trends and developments in the use of open source software (OSS) in the country. You can find the report here and the factsheet here.
The updated report outlines the evolution of OSS adoption in the Spanish public sector since 2020. The National Agency for Digital Administration, previously known as Secretariat of Digital Administration, is the main actor at national level that ensures the application of Interoperability Framework and addresses the digitalisation of the Spanish public sector. The Technology Transfer Centre (CTT) remains the main reference to access the open source solutions used by the Spanish public sector, at national, regional and local level. One of the key developments in the past year was the update of the Guide on the Publication and Licensing of IT Solutions elaborated by National Agency for Digital Administration. This guide provides a clear explanation on the different types of software licences from ‘strong’ (GPL, Affero) and ‘mixed’ copyleft (EUPL, MPL) to ‘permissive’ licence (Apache, MIT), and instructions to publish and reuse IT solutions in the CTT catalogue. More importantly, the Guide has a dedicated section about managing open source software projects, which focuses on the legal aspects and obligations of public administrations for this type of project.
Spain benefits from a strong ecosystem of OSS stakeholders, especially in Galicia, Catalonia, Valencia and Basque Country; in these regions there are relevant long standing open source initiatives such as the educational project Lliurex, or the dedicated Free Software Office of Galicia (Oficina de Software Libre da Xunta de Galicia). The majority of regions have adopted legislation that established the principle of technological neutrality that imposes the use and promotion of open source software. Additionally, Spain has a very rich citizens platform ecosystem based on open source software provided by two key organisations: Consul Democracy and Decidim..
Overall, Spain has made significant progress in its use of open source software (OSS), despite the absence of a specific national policy to promote its use. The update of national guidelines and the adoption of enabling regional legislation have marked the Spanish public sector's good progress in promoting open source software.
