Europe, Brazil and China have teamed up to launch a global platform to promote the adoption of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) by businesses, governments and academia.
The project, named QualiPSo (Quality Platform for Open Source Software) is designed to make open source a formidable lever to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness accelerate information and communication technology (ICT) growth, and implement the i2010 policy for growth and jobs. The project is hoped to achieve these aims by developing FLOSS into a low-cost and flexible alternative to proprietary software. The project will boast a technology specialists, government departments, and academic institutions amongst its 20 founding members. It include the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOCUS), INRIA (The French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control), State University of Sao Paulo, South China University of Technology/Guangzhou Middleware Research Center, the French Gendarmerie (military police), Bull, Siemens and Thales. They are planning to create four open source software centres in Europe, China and Brazil.
