The Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR) is an online project launched by the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...

under the

IDABC All European countries show eGovernment initiatives, mainly related to the improvement of governance at the national level. Significant eGovernment activities also take place at the European Commission level as well. There is an extensive list ...

programme, to support the distribution and re-use of

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

developed by or for

public sector The public sector, also called the state sector, is the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises. Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, in ...

administrations across Europe, connecting EU services and Member States. In December 2011, the OSOR.eu and SEMIC.eu communities moved to a new collaborative platform -

Joinup Joinup is a collaboration platform created by the European Commission. It is funded by the European Union via its Interoperability Solutions for Public Administrations Programme (ISA Programme). Joinup was launched on 9 December 2011. It repla ...

. The reason for the migration to Joinup was to provide public administrations in Europe with better communication and collaboration tools, to share experiences with interoperability solutions for public administrations, to increase the number of users and to leverage synergies between the OSOR.eu and SEMIC.eu user communities, while optimising the use of public funding.

About the platform

The OSOR.eu platform aims to support and encourage the re-use of publicly financed

Open Source Software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

developments (OSS or FLOSS for "Free, Libre & Open Source Software") that are of particular use for public administrations in Europe. OSOR.eu aims to support the collaborative development of OSS applications and solutions, in particular cross-border collaboration and exchange of knowledge or software.

Services

All of OSOR's services are now available on Joinup.eu: *A central pan-European information point on OSS including news, events,

case studies A case study is an in-depth, detailed examination of a particular case (or cases) within a real-world context. For example, case studies in medicine may focus on an individual patient or ailment; case studies in business might cover a particular ...

and

newsletter A newsletter is a printed or electronic report containing news concerning the activities of a business or an organization that is sent to its members, customers, employees or other subscribers. Newsletters generally contain one main topic of ...

s about on-going initiatives, projects, new applications and developments in European Members States and across the world, as well as advice/guidelines and best practice exchanges concerning the use of OSS. *A repository and registry providing visibility to European OSS projects and initiatives in public administrations, allowing users to upload and download, search and retrieve software and documentation. It facilitates mutual access to existing projects through a dedicated

taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...

and therefore creates more opportunities to develop exchanges, re-usability and community building across borders. *A collaborative cross-border development environment providing technical, organisational and legal support. It enables collaborative development and sharing/exchange of experience and software by providing facilities for the collaborative creation of content - including a "forge", discussion forums, blogs.

Bodies behind the project

The OSOR project is financed by the European Union, managed by the European Commission under the

Directorate-General for Informatics The Directorate-General for Informatics (DG DIGIT) is a Directorate-General of the European Commission. The mission of the DG Informatics is to define the IT strategy of the Commission and to provide a modern and high-performance information techn ...

(DIGIT), and supported by the Member States' national, regional and local administrations.

References

External links

OSOR community on Joinup

Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Osor.Eu Computer law Free software culture and documents Information technology organizations based in Europe Social information processing Works about intellectual property law