freedom

Study and survey on the impact of Open Source Software and Hardware in the EU economy

Fraunhofer ISI and OpenForum Europe are conducting a study for the European Commission which shall investigate in detail the economic impact of Open Source Software (OSS) and Open Source Hardware (OSH) on the European economy. The study should identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges of open source in relevant ICT policies. The Open Source impact … Read more

Free Software is More Reliable!

Apologists for proprietary software like to say, “free software is a nice dream, but we all know that only the proprietary system can produce reliable products. A bunch of hackers just can’t do this.” Empirical evidence disagrees, however; scientific tests, described below, have found GNU software to be more reliable than comparable proprietary software. This … Read more

A Call to Open Budgets, Join us to shape an equitable future

Government decisions about how public money is raised, allocated and spent are moral choices – reflecting a nation’s values and priorities. A nation’s budget determines what services are available and to whom – including schools for children, medicine for the sick and support for the unemployed. To assure that public budgets, and the use of … Read more

Tackling the Beast: Using GNU Health to help the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction The world is facing one of the the biggest health, economic and social crisis. A minuscule, 50-nanometer in diameter structure is putting the most powerful world economies on their knees, and hundred of thousands are tragically succumbing to COVID-19. This article is an invitation to governments to embrace GNU Health and Libre Software for … Read more

The Open Source Policy Meeting 2020

This year’s pre-FOSDEM EU policy meeting on 31 January 2020 was a water-shed moment for OpenForum Europe. It’s an annual affair, but this year, we almost tripled the number of attendees who gathered to exchange ideas on the role of Open Source in accelerating Europe’s digital transformation. Representatives ranged from individual developers, SMEs and policy … Read more

Open Source Software Country Intelligence

The open source software country intelligence aims to provide insights on all EU Member States in the domain of open source software policies and initiatives. The country intelligence reports and their respective factsheets are published as part of the Open Source Observatory (OSOR) project of the ISA² Programme.  The country intelligence will be presented in two formats: a … Read more

Why freeing Windows 7 opens doors

Since its launch on January 24th, we’ve had an overwhelming amount of support in our call to “upcycle” Windows 7. Truthfully, the signature count flew far faster than we ever expected it to, even despite our conservative (if aptly numbered) goal of 7,777 signatures. We have seen the campaign called quixotic and even “completely delusional,” … Read more

Creativity in the Countryside: How Art and Tech are Revitalizing Epirus

Tzoumerka is made of stone. Not just the towering peaks of this mountainous area, formed by nature and geography over millennia, but almost everything made by human hands — the walls, town squares, bridges and buildings — has been crafted from the local stone. It creates quite an impression: permanence, timelessness and a resistance to … Read more

Getting ready for Open Data Day 2020 on Saturday 7th March

Next year marks the 10th anniversary of Open Data Day! Open Data Day is the annual event where we gather to reach out to new people and build new solutions to issues in our communities using open data. The next edition will take place on Saturday 7th March 2020. Over the last decade, this event … Read more