Switzerland approves new open source software strategy

9
The IT Council of the Swiss Confederation adopted at the end of February 2004 version 1.0 of the Federal Administrations open source software (OSS)
strategy, which, among other things, considers Linux as a future potential standard operating system for the desktop.

Pointing out that the Swiss Federal Administration must base its software choices on grounds of interoperability and cost-effectiveness, and that open
source software stimulates competition in the software sector, the strategic paper defines three priorities for the Federal OSS strategy.

The strategic priorities are equality of treatment (both open source and proprietary software must be put on equal footing when evaluated or procured
by the Federal administration), sharing of software (federal agencies should whenever appropriate share software developed in-house, according to a
licence model similar to the OSS concept), and the implementation of pre-requirements for OSS adoption (federal authorities must work towards
establishing certain pre-requirements for successful OSS implementation).

Link: europa.eu.int

Category:

  • Open Source