A project to protect national internet infrastructure in Estonia is planning to publish some of the tools it has developed as open source under the European Union Public Licence (EUPL). The project, run by the National Informatics Centre (RIA), is already using a number of open source tools in its goal to monitor Estonian network traffic and prevent network problems.

The council of the government of the autonomous province of Trentino on Wednesday morning approved a law on free and open source software and open data. The law instructs public administrations to prepare migrations plans to switch to free and open source software and to make its software applications available as open source.

The Icelandic government has released a policy on free and open source software. In short, the policy states that when buying software free and open source software should be considered on an equal footing with proprietary software, that software based on open standards shall be chosen, that lock-ins to specific vendors should be avoided (choosing free software is one means to achieve this), that bespoke or customized software shall be reusable (and free and open source software achieves this), and finally that students of Icelandic educational institutes shall have the opportunity to learn about and use free and open source software on a par with proprietary software.

This policy applies to all state institutions and organizations operated with public funds.

The Open Source Repository and Observatory (OSOR), a new site sponsored by the European Commission to foster the exchange of FOSS related information and software among European public administrations, recently published guidelines on the procurement of open source software.

Vermont has become the latest government to enact an open source software policy, after Secretary of Administration Neale F. Lunderville recently signed a policy developed under state CIO David Tucker's leadership.

The UK government has rejigged its open source and open standards software procurement policy, following pressure from OSS vendors last autumn. Early last year the Cabinet Office revised its rules on public sector open source software purchases, but many OSS players complained that the policy amendments didn’t go far enough.

A government committee recommends a change in German law to enable public administrations to make their software available as free and open source. The current law prohibits governments from being part of the development process in the free software community.

One of the striking developments on the open source enterprise software scene has been the rise and rise of the forge. These are typically adjuncts to the main commercial sites that try to foster a vibrant developer community centred on the relevant open source code.

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?