OpenForum Europe is contributing to a European project: FOSS4SMEs, which aims to equip European SMEs – Small-Medium Enterprises – with the skills and competences to properly use Free and Open Source Software, so to improve their digital performances and competitiveness. To reach this objective, the project will develop a free online educational resource for managers and staff of existing SMEs and start-ups, to encourage uptake of the open software digital transformation.
As a first step the project is conducting a survey to learn more about SMEs’ knowledge gaps in relation to FOSS usage in business. OpenForum invites owners and employees of eligible enterprises (less than 250 employees, turnover not exceeding €43 million) to participate in the survey which you can find here.
The project is conducted by the FOSS4SMEs Consortium, which is composed by the following partner organisations: Atlantis Engineering S.A. (Greece), European Digital Learning Network (Italy), OpenForum Europe (UK), Dublin Institute of Technology (Ireland), Free Software Foundation Europe e.V. (Germany), Hogskolan i Skovde (Sweden). It is funded by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ program.
FOSS stands for Free and Open Source Software. Free software licenses and open-source licenses are widely used by all the major software houses to drive their operating and application systems, so the servers, desktops, smartphones (e.g. Android), operating systems and many applications in use in your office and home all depend on FOSS.
You may not, however, be actively using FOSS (in contrast to proprietary software) in your own customer systems and applications.