OSL: the Danish Open Source Business Association

OSL is a business association for enterprises who base their products, solutions and services upon Open Source Software (OSS) and/or Open Standards. The purpose of OSL "is to work in the interest of suppliers of OSS by promoting an open well-functioning market for development, sale and licensing of open source software to private as well as public sector customers based on open standards." ¹

OSL wishes to foster a genuine market based choice between different types of software development and licensing models to enable the choice of OSS based on quality, price, usability and suitability. The association works to secure a genuine choice of IT-architecture in the public as well as the private sector.

OSL believes that no one should be locked to a single vendor in order to communicate with the national authorities. This is the reason for OSL involvement in the struggle to put open source and proprietary solutions on an equal footing and making OSS available in public IT procurements.

OSL is mainly arguing for the active support of the idea of open source - while at same time being able to pin point exactly where and how open source might bring useful contributions to SME-businesses and the public sector alike.

According to the statutes of the association, OSL is also working along the same guidelines at a European level:

• OSL is co-founder of the ODF Alliance actively promoting the Open Document Format - ODF, as the primary document format in the public sector. OSL is an active member of Open Forum Europe (OFE) - since its foundation in 2006. OFE aims at providing clear and matter-of-factual information on open source products, securing buyers a real choice of software.

• OSL co-founded the Open Nordic network in 2007. This network funded by the Nordic Council is active in the Scandinavian countries. It aims at fostering the business and use of open source. OSL counts with an active and fruitful collaboration in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Island.

• OSL is member of OBOOE – the European Federation for the Open Source Industry, founded in 2008. OBOOE represents already 1000 SME and is acting in the interest of open source businesses across Europe.

• OSL is one of the driving forces behind the Danish "The Knowledge Center for Software" established in 2006 by the national IT & Tele Agency. The center, with its resources for procurement and development of software, focuses on the needs of the Danish public sector supporting mainly IT decision makers and developers in eGovernment. Hereby, OSL and its members have a major influence on the successful Plone-based open source repository and exchange site, softwareborsen.dk - The Software Exchange platform has been shared with other Scandinavian countries.