Open Source Blog

The project boasts an interesting mix of technology vendors, government departments, and academic institutions amongst its 20 founding members:

From academia:
Fraunhofer FOKUS
INRIA
Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center
State University of Sao Paulo
South China University of Technology/ Guangzhou Middleware Research Center
University of Bozen
University of Insubria
University Rey Juan Carlos

From government:
The Department for Innovation and Technologies of the Italian Presidency of the Council of ministers
The French Gendarmerie Nationale
Serpro

Vendors:
Atos Origin
Bull
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica
European Dynamics
Siemens
Telefonica I+D
Thales
CRMPA
Mandriva

While it might be said that it is a little lacking in open source software specialists, the group nevertheless has some serious muscle and brains behind it.

Together these members are planning on creating six competency centres to support the deployment and adoption of open source software – four in Europe, one in China and one in Brazil, while also focusing on improving the quality of open source software and deployment practices.

The competency centres are due to open in 2008, with the first results from the ongoing four-year project are due at the end of this year. Activities will include:

- Improving legal quality of Open Source Software
- Defining methods, development processes, and business models
- Providing test suites and qualified integration stacks to demonstrate OSS interoperability
- Implementing best practices in information management to improve the productivity of OSS development and support
- Studying qualities that can sustain trust in Open Source
- Developing a new Capability Maturity Model-like approach to assessing the quality of OSS
- Designing and implementing the “QualiPSo Factory”, an integrated next generation forge environment
- Developing a long-lasting network of professionals caring for the quality of open source software for enterprise computing
- Promoting OSS at political level, promoting laws and regulations supporting OSS
- Promoting and encouraging practical uptake of QualiPSo methodologies and tools

While it is not altogether clear what QualiPSo will deliver that the various existing open source promotion activities and consortia are not, it will be interesting to see the results of the CMM-related project for assessing software quality.

Other areas, such as the plan to “define a coherent family of open source software licenses” would appear to step on the toes of the OSI just a little bit.