David r
And now, the DG for Informatics is getting in on the act. In the recently published European Interoperability Framework for pan-European eGovernment Services - a document that “provides a series of recommendations and defines generic standards with regard to organisational, semantic and technical aspects of interoperability, offering a comprehensive set of principles for European co-operation in eGovernment” – we are specifically told that only open source software can be used in the development of interoperability systems. Any software that may be protected by patents can only be integrated if the owners agree that the “standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty free basis”. So, a go-getting and smart European SME may well have invested significant time and money in developing world-class software. It may have followed the advice of commissioners McCreevy and Verheugen to get patent protection, but when it comes to putting that software into a potentially lucrative pan-European project, it’s no can do.
standards
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