1. The Commission shall continue to adopt formally, through the
Product Management procedure, the use of OSS technologies and products.
2. The Commission shall ensure a level
playing field for open source software and demonstrate an active and
fair consideration of using open source software – taking account of the
total cost of ownership of the solution.
3. For all future IT developments, the
Commission shall promote the use of products that support recognised,
well-documented and preferably open technical specifications that can be
freely adopted, implemented and extended. Interoperability is a
critical issue for the Commission, and use of well-established standards
is a key factor to achieve it.
4. For the internal development of new
information systems, in particular where deployment is foreseen by third
parties outside the EC infrastructure, OSS shall be the preferred
choice and used whenever possible.
5. The Commission shall further clarify
the legal context around the internal use of OSS and make this
clarification available to interested parties. The main topics to be
addressed include: licensing schemes, Intellectual Property Rights,
equal opportunities in the context of procurement and participation in
OSS communities.
6. The Commission shall further develop
guidelines and best practices allowing the setup of OSS and mixed
solutions covering the full set of professional services, including
deployment of OSS solutions in its data centres at the same level of
service as the proprietary ones.
7. The Commission shall continue to
develop and adopt best practice and tools emerging from OSS communities
while applying state-of-the-art governance practices, particularly in
the domain of security. In addition, the EC will facilitate and promote
the creation of communities for those OSS products released by the
Commission and facilitate participation in external OSS communities.
8. OSS plays an important role in
e-Government projects and shall be therefore considered within the
framework of these activities.
9. The collaboration between Commission
teams in charge of the internal and external OSS strategies shall be
further enhanced in order to achieve convergence, in particular through
alignment with and reuse of validated solutions produced by the ISA
programme.
10. The ICT ecosystem is extremely
dynamic, innovative, and constantly evolving; as such it impacts many
areas of the Commission's policies. Within this context, DIGIT shall
continue to play an active role in promoting partnerships focusing on
OSS between the European Institutions and other stakeholders.
Günther Oettinger, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society
"I am fully
committed to making full use of digital technologies to drive public
sector modernisation and promote greater transparency, more
participation, better interoperability and more openness in the way we
work with our stakeholders"