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Open source communities delegates draw the attention of the Members of the European Parliament to the current situation where the institution’s ICT systems are locked into the products of one vendor, warns about the implications of this for participative democracy and for fair competition, and calls for action to promote Open Standards and Interoperability.
Two EU-funded projects in the area of Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS), namely OpenTTT and FLOSSMETRICS, have recently published a F/OSS guide for SMEs. Different types of software applications and businesses are addressed, making this guide useful for most SMEs that wish to simply use F/OSS or even build a F/OSS-based business approach.
25 experts from across the world discussed in depth the relationship and importance of Open Standards to the Internet. They wrote a call upon the European Commission, National Governments, Standards Bodies, Industry, the Community and the Market about the future of the Internet. Zea Partners supports the Geneva Declaration on the Future of the Internet.
Participative democracy relies increasingly on the ability of citizens and stakeholders to access public information and to communicate with officials and elected politicians electronically. To highlight the impact of open standards on democracy, the Greens/European Free Alliance organized a half day event at the European Parliament in Brussels on April 17, 2008.
OBOOE is new umbrella Federation bringing together European business associations and organizations related to free, libre and open source software. The Federation goals are to encourage cross-border networking between national initiatives and to become a voice for the sector.
The PloneGov team is proud to announce that their eGovernment open source initiative based on Plone has been awarded the “Good Practice label 2007”. PloneGov receives this prestigious label based on the recommendation from the 2007 European eGovernment Awards consortium.
A research project examining the production of information and communication technologies by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the EU-25 has been concluded. One of the key findings of the study was to confirm the interlinkages between research, innovation and economic performance.
Public sector and Open Source Software (PS-OSS), a report commissioned by the EU Commission addresses the question : What would be the potential impact on the development of the Information Society if public organisations (administrations, research institutions, universities, agencies, public companies) were to release software fully owned by them under a Open Source licence? Is an amplification effect on the adoption and use of information society technologies to be expected?
PloneGov is selected among the 52 best European e-Government projects, and is invited to present the project at the fourth Ministerial eGovernment Conference held in Lisbon in September 2007. PloneGov projects relies on 2 renowned open source software : Plone and Zope. Its success results from a close collaboration between public organizations and Zea Partners, an international network of SME building Zope and Plone solutions.
Flossquality.eu is an initiative of 3 EU research projects : Qualoss, Flossmetrics and SQO-OSS. It demonstrate the strong collaboration between the actors of the 3 projects. The expected benefit is to ease the access to information by disseminating news by joint RSS feed.
Researchers need a platform to support transnational scientific collaboration. Paul Henning Krogh explains how collaborative software as Plone brings outstanding benefits to EU research projects.
FLOSSmetrics, an european research project, will provide you detailed quantitative data about the development process, development actors, and developed artifacts of those projects. The project aims to ease the strategic decision of integrating adequate free and open source software (F/OSS) components into software systems. Zea positions itself as an pro-active partner in this research project.
QUALOSS, an european research project, aims to enhance the competitive position of the software industry by providing methodologies and tools for improving their productivity and the quality of their software products. Zea positions itself as an pro-active actor and is responsible for results dissemination.
Zea academic partner, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, organizes a research room at FOSDEM. The goal is to explore opportunities of exchange and collaboration between open source researchers and open source communities.
In the Flossimpact report, Zea Partners is presented as an innovative business model part of a thriving new economic ecosystem. It also includes a number of references about Plone and Zope, outlining the maturity reached by these technologies in term of technical achievement and community organization. The project CommunesPlone, lead by local governments, is presented as an ICT project unusual in terms of opportunity for innovation, standardization and economy of scale.
The European Commission has released a study about the economic impact of Open Source on the ICT sector. The Floss Impact report was led by academics at the United Nations University (UNU-MERIT). Presenting the study abstract.
Experts representing the open source community, government, businesses, researchers and higher education institutes met in Buenos Aires to study argentinian and regional FLOSS impact.
The European Commission has commissioned a study to explore the potential impact if the Public Sector were to release its software open source. The project CommunesPlone, based on the renowned open source applications Plone/Zope, is investigated as a practical example of mutualisation between local governments.
At the last Plone Foundation meeting in Seattle, 2 interesting questions were raised. First the need to gather quantitative data on Plone and the development processes, second increase the visibility of Plone future in the next 5 to 10 years. Zea Partners goals includes tackling these issues. An example is Zea recent involvement Qualoss and Flossmetrics research projects.
Increasing the participation of small and medium-sized companies in EU-funded programmes was the topic of a SME stakeholder conference held in Brussels on October 11, 2006.
Xavier Heymans was invited to comment the study findings based on Zea Partner network experience. This study analyses the positive economical impact of Open Source on EU and world economy, and the potential of economical growth. The final report will be made public this winter.
A new research on Zea business model will be presented at the 2nd workshop on coopetition strategy in Milan. The central question of the study is «how are organizations able to manage two logics of competition and cooperation simultaneously when they are in coopetitive relationship ?»
CALIBRE has identified as a promising business model the approach used by ZEA Partners and its network of companies across Europe and beyond that shares customers, contacts and expertise to deliver software-related services.
The Lisbon Trust is a conservatory of open software copyrights and legal services. It provides a 50-year pledge that Europe's competitive, knowledge-based society will be built atop a competitive IT marketplace. The mission and outcomes from the Trust are designed to reflect and fulfill European values and strengths.
CALIBRE, the european co-ordination action for libre software engineering, aims to coordinate the study of the characteristics of open source software projects, products and processes, distributed development, and agile methods.

Source

http://www.zeapartners.org/eu