EU Increases Support Open Source Solutions

October 13th, 2006: The European Union Commission is getting behind open source software with the creation of a web portal it hopes will increase public sector adoption of open solutions.

The commission has selected a consortium led by Unisys Belgium to create and manage the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR), a centre for the storage and exchange of open source code, information on licensing and the use of applications, and hopefully a place that will facilitate the free flow of knowledge and ideas.

Unisys says that the consortium hopes that this collaboration will enable the European Member States’ administrations to improve the return on their information technology investments and make their applications more interoperable.

While it not trying to replace proprietary software, the European Commission anticipates that OSOR will encourage European administrations to use each other's software and develop common projects such as public e-procurement, interoperability between government applications or mutual recognition of the various e-ID card formats.

“Public administrations’ interest in open source is not so much about open source replacing proprietary products,” says Karel De Vriendt, Head of the European Union's European eGovernment Services Unit. “More and more it is about developing custom applications based on open source software, on collaboration during development and on using open source licences to share the results of such developments. The new OSOR should become the preferred cooperation tool to speed up software pooling amongst Member States.”

Unisys is currently mapping out the OSOR and expects the service to be online in late 2007.

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