The OFE Open Source Policy Series 2021 offered deep-dives into the most policy-relevant topics in the area of open source, open technologies and the most pressing digital policy challenges facing Europe. Following the EU Open Source Policy Summit 2021, where high-level policy makers such as European…

Recently, the OFE team was interviewed for a report on the role of Open Source Software during the Covid-19 crisis. In our conversation about good examples of collaboration between the public sector and the vast Open Source…

After the publication of the Guidelines on Technical Specifications for Digital Green Certificates (DGC), it is now up to the Member States to deliver the open source reference implementations for the DGC software at a national level. This story was originally published in the article…

The European Commission has positioned itself at the forefront of governments’ work with Open Source Brussels, Belgium — OpenForum Europe (OFE) welcomes the European Commission’s new Open Source Software Strategy for 2020-2023. With this much…

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…

SaveCodeshare.eu Campaign successful: Free and Open Source Software Development Saved from Upload filters. Yesterday, the European Parliament passed the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, including articles 11 and 13. The consolidated trilogue text was…

Despite uncertainties and controversies on the way, the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive seems to be reaching the end of the road. This week, the Member States and the European Parliament reached an agreement on a consolidated text to be put to a vote in the…

As part of our ongoing SaveCodeshare.eu campaign, OpenForum Europe has, together with 30 other stakeholder organisations, sent an open letter to the relevant EU policymakers engaging with the Copyright Directive, in order to welcome the introduction of a workable…

Download the report here from our library The report provides an overview of activities initiated by SDOs on open source software. The mapping shows that for SDOs the collaboration with OSS communities may have different forms and address different…

The standardisation world is at a crossroads; standards are: critical for digitisation of private and public sectors alike; increasingly high on the political agendas  of both the European Commission and Member States, as instruments for industrial and innovation policy; and key assets of…

Open Source Software (OSS) is software that everyone can run, for any purpose; that everyone is free to study and change, so that it functions as they wish; and of which everyone can redistribute copies, for example in order to help others. These freedoms provide huge potential, not…

Andrew Updegrove is a co-founder and partner of the Boston law firm of Gesmer Updegrove LLP and an internationally recognized expert on standard setting and open source organizations and how to form them. He has represented over 70 standard setting, promotional, and advocacy consortia and open source…