Today, the Commission has adopted new rules on Open Source Software that will enable its software solutions to be publicly accessible whenever there are potential benefits for citizens, companies or other public services. The recent Commission study on the impact of Open Source Software and Hardware on technological independence, competitiveness and innovation in the EU economy showed that investment in open source leads on average to four times higher returns. The Commission services will be able to publish the software source code they own in much shorter time and with less paperwork.
Good. A small step, sure, but my hope remains that eventually, we come to realise that for our own safety and security, all code must be open source, no matter if it’s from Apple, Microsoft, or anyone else. We can’t continue down our current path where some of the most crucial, elemental parts of our society rely entirely on closed code of which we have no idea what it is – or isn’t – doing.
With regard to open source and my comments in a previous topic where I commented that “the state” might fulfill a role as “the state” does with roads and funding R&D. This news from the EU was a useful “other shoe dropping” and helps develop a dialogue as well as expanding examples of how this role may be fulfilled.
Without digging into the EU codebase I suspect there is scope for smart project direction and code management. There may be discrete problems which can be solved which when released might improve the quality of code and practice in the wider ecosystem.
A small step is what precedes a giant leap. The opportunity for governments to become both consumers and contributors to open source is very powerful.
(a) the open source licence granted by the Commission shall be the EUPL, except in the
cases listed in points (b) and (c);
(b) where the use of another open source licence is made obligatory due to reciprocal
clauses (‘copyleft’) that apply to parts of the software originating from a third party,
or where an alternative open source licence is deemed preferable to the EUPL for
particular software, notably in order to facilitate its adoption by the community of
users, that alternative open source licence may be used, provided it is a standard open
source licence
(c) where, as a result of the licence clauses applicable to parts of the software originating
from a third party, a choice exists between several standard open licences, excluding
the EUPL, preference shall be given to the open source licence granting the broadest
rights of use to the users (‘permissive licences’).