European Commission (EC)

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Open Access To Research Publications Reaching 'Tipping Point'

Press Release | Science-Metrix, European Commission (EC) | August 21, 2013

The global shift towards making research findings available free of charge for readers—so-called 'open access'—was confirmed today in a study funded by the European Commission. This new research suggests that open access is reaching the tipping point, with around 50% of scientific papers published in 2011 now available... Read More »

Open access to scientific knowledge has reached its 'tipping point'

Devon Hanel | OpenSource.Com | October 7, 2013

A recent study funded by the European Commission and undertaken by analysts at Science-Metrix, a Montreal-based company that assesses science and technology organizations, has concluded that half of all published academic papers become freely available in no more than two years. Read More »

Open Access: Four Ways It Could Enhance Academic Freedom

Curt Rice | The Guardian | April 22, 2013

The power of funding alone should not be enough to override academic freedom, argues Curt Rice, nor does open access automatically skew the world of scholarship Read More »

Open Data And Open Science

Carlos Morais Pires | ICT Update | June 1, 2013

The G8 International Conference on Open Data in April 2013 aimed to make agricultural research more widely available to improve global food security. Carlos Morais Pires from the European Commission discusses the EC’s effort to increase access to data and reviews the G8’s plans. Read More »

Open Development And The OKfestival

Kim Borrowdale | IATI | September 28, 2012

Kim Borrowdale, IATI Delivery Manager, recently attended Okfest 2012 in Helsinki (Finland) and has shared her personal account of the conference with us. The theme was Open Knowledge in Action with a full week of participatory sessions, keynote lectures, workshops, hackathons and satellite events organised by diverse communities from over 40 nations across the globe. Read More »

Open Source (Seeds) Under Threat

Glyn Moody | Computerworld | May 3, 2013

[...] Just as there is free software that anyone may use and share, there are free seeds - those that are part of the ancient seeds commons, created over thousands of years, available for use by anyone. And just as free software is threatened by software patents, so seeds are equally endangered by seed patents. Read More »

Open Source Community takes on Microsoft in Europe - again!

Reuters | Newsday | March 26, 2013

A Spanish association representing open-source software users has filed a complaint against Microsoft Corp to the European Commission, in a new challenge to the Windows developer following a hefty fine earlier this month. Read More »

Oracle Won’t Block Open Source In The Public Sector

Ed Boyajian | Tech Week Europe | January 24, 2014

Last year, Oracle flamed out in its attempt to stall the adoption of open source technology by the US Department of Defense (DoD) when a  White Paper surfaced, in which Oracle warns the DoD about the dangers of hidden costs and inefficiency of open source software, and tries to explain the proper handling of such technology. Read More »

The European Commission To Create Level Playing Field For Open Source

The European Commission (EC) announced on March 27 that it is going to create a level playing field for open source software when procuring new software solutions. Evaluation of open source and proprietary software will take into account their total cost of ownership and exit costs. “For all future IT developments, the Commission shall promote the use of products that support recognized, 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”, the EC announces in a new ten point strategy.

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The Future of Scientific Discovery Relies on Open Science Models

Ross Mounce is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bath studying the use of fossils in phylogeny and phyloinformatics, completing his PhD at the University of Bath last year. Ross was one of the first Panton Fellows and is an active member of the Open Knowledge Foundation, particularly the Open Science Working Group. He is an advocate for open science, and he is actively working on content mining academic publications to reuse scientific research in meta-analyses to gain higher level insights in evolutionary patterns... Read More »

Top 10 FOSS Legal Developments of 2014

The year 2014 continued the trend of the increasing importance of legal issues for the FOSS community. Continuing the tradition of looking back over the top ten legal developments in FOSS, my selection of the top ten issues for 2014 is as follows...

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Top 10 Open Source Legal Developments in 2015

In 2015 there were a variety of legal issues of importance to the FOSS (free and open source) community. Continuing the tradition of looking back over the top ten legal developments in FOSS, my selection of the top ten issues for 2015 is as follows:

  1. Settlement of Versata cases interpreting General Public License version 2 (GPLv2)
  2. First decision interpreting General Public License version 3 (GPLv3)
  3. Linux programmer sues VMware for violation of GPLv2 for Linux
  4. Community GPL compliance
  5. European Commission antitrust investigation of Google and its Android operating System (Android OS)...

Towards A Functional Continuum Operating System: EU Funded Project ICOS Kicks Off In Barcelona

Press Release | Atos Group | November 30, 2022

22 leading European organizations from 11 countries join forces to tackle the main challenges of the IoT – Edge – Cloud paradigm, proposing an approach to embed a set of functionalities and define a brand new IoT-edge-Cloud Operating System (ICOS)...ICOS aims to design, develop, and validate a meta-operating system for the Cloud-Edge-IoT continuum by addressing four main challenges...

UK Government Earmarks £10m For Open Access Publishing [UK]

Geraint Jones | The Guardian | September 7, 2012

The money for scientists to publish their research in open access journals will come out of the existing science budget Read More »

UK's OA Policy Influences Research Assessment

Neil Jacobs | Research Information | August 11, 2014

The UK’s system for assessing research and allocating money has added new open-access requirements. Neil Jacobs looks at what this means for researchers in the UK and elsewhere...

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