Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 12th Oct 2006 17:44 UTC, submitted by elsewhere
"The European Commission has taken steps to promote the use of open source systems and software in the public sector. It has selected a consortium led by Unisys Belgium to create and manage the Open Source Observatory and Repository, the company announced. Other members of the consortium are the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, consultancy GOPA Cartermill, and the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos of Madrid. They will provide an internet service and portal enabling European administrations to centrally store and share the software code of their open source applications and exchange open source knowledge."
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Member since:
2006-08-09
Microsoft may be a moneymaker as an American tax payer, it is much less to European countries. Some clever people in the EU elite have seen that open source is an opportunity for European software makers. Mandriva, Suse, for example, started out as European firms.
Europe wants to be a little more competitive in hi-tech and as it's hard to beat the giant in its own proprietary field, it now stimulates the public sector to use open source, hoping it will stimulate innovation in the European software/IT sector in turn. A sort of software Keynesianism so to speak.
Unfortunately, the quality of (esp. 'beta') education, and the investments in it, in Europe leave much to be desired.
One notable exception is Finland. Guess which OSS figure comes from there.