The european commission recently released the news that has approved new rules on open source software, according to which software solutions developed by order of the European Commission, which represent potential benefits for residents, companies and government institutions, will be available to everyone under open licenses.
The rules they also facilitate product opening existing software owned by the European Commission and reduce the paperwork associated with this process.
As examples of openable solutions developed for the European Commission, eSignature is mentioned, a set of royalty-free standards, utilities and services for creating and verifying electronic signatures accepted in all countries of the European Union. Another example is the package Legislation Editing Open Software (LEOS), designed to prepare templates for legal documents and legislation that can be edited in a structured format suitable for automatic processing in various information systems.
It is envisaged that all open products from the European Commission are placed in a repository for easy access and the loan of codes. Before publishing the source code, a security audit will be carried out, checks will be made for possible leaks of confidential data in the code and possible intersections with someone else's intellectual property will be analyzed.
Budget and Administration Commissioner Johannes Hahn said:
“Open source offers great advantages in an area where the EU can play a leading role. The new rules will increase transparency and help the Commission, as well as citizens, businesses and public services across Europe, to benefit from open source software development. Pooling efforts to improve software and co-creating new features reduces costs to society, as we also benefit from improvements made by other developers. This can also improve security, as external and independent specialists check the software for errors and security flaws.
Unlike the previously existing processes for the opening of the European Commission code, the new regulation allows the approval of the opening of the code in a meeting to be dispensed with from the European Commission, and also allows programmers who work for the European Commission and are involved in the development of any open source project, without additional approvals, to transfer enhancements created in the course of their main work to open projects.
In addition, the software, developed before the adoption of the new rules, will be gradually reviewed in order to assess the feasibility of its opening, if the programs can be useful not only for the European Commission.
The ad also mentions the results of a study carried out by the European Commission on the impact of open source software and hardware on technological independence, competitiveness and innovation in the EU economy. Research has shown that investments in open source software generate four times the return on average.
The report made claims that open source contributes to the GDP of the European Union between 65 and 95 billion euros. At the same time, an increase in the European Union's participation in open source development by 10% is expected to lead to an increase in GDP of 0,4-0,6%, which in absolute terms amounts to approximately 100.000 million euros.
Among the benefits to develop European Commission products in the form of open source software is the reduction of costs for society, thanks to the union of forces with other developers and the joint development of new functionalities. In addition, there is an increase in the security of the programs, as external and independent experts have the opportunity to participate in the verification of the code for errors and vulnerabilities.
The availability of the European Commission's program code will also bring significant added value to businesses, startups, citizens and government agencies, and will stimulate innovation.
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/