Europe, Brazil and China unite to foster open source
software to boost growth
Brussels, 15 March 2007 ¨C Leading European, Brazilian and Chinese information and
communications technology (ICT) players announced today that they have joined forces to
launch QualiPSo, a quality platform to foster the development and use of open source
software to help their industries in the global race for growth.
The aim of QualiPSo is to help industries and governments fuel innovation and
competitiveness in today's and tomorrow's global environment by providing the way to use
trusted low-cost, flexible open source software to develop innovative and reliable information
systems. To meet that goal, QualiPSo will define and implement the technologies, processes
and policies to facilitate the development and use of open source software components, with
the same level of trust traditionally offered by proprietary software. The initiative will support
the development of local ICT industries ¨C from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
and independent software vendors (ISVs) to large ICT providers and systems integrators in
Europe, Brazil and China ¨C and help establish European leadership in domains such as
distributed middleware.
The 20 founding members, across Europe, Brazil and China, are a heavyweight group of ICT
industry players (Atos Origin, Bull, Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, European Dynamics,
Siemens, Telefonica I+D, Thales), SMEs (Centro Ricerche Matematica Pura e Applicata,
Mandriva), governments (the Department for innovation and technologies of the Italian
Presidency of the Council of ministers, the French Gendarmerie Nationale, Serpro), and
academics (Fraunhofer FOKUS, INRIA, the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center,
the State University of Sao Paulo, the South China University of Technology / Guangzhou
Middleware Research Center, the University of Bozen, the University of Insubria and the
University Rey Juan Carlos). The project is funded by the European Commission under its
sixth framework program (FP6), as part of the Information Society Technologies (IST)
initiative.
QualiPSo's launch comes at a time when major industries have experienced the power of
open source software to accelerate the development of global, low-cost and reliable
information systems, but are waiting for ultimate proof of trust to definitively commit to large-
scale deployment. By providing the prerequisites for trust ¨C from the legal, technical and
business points of view ¨C QualiPSo will definitely foster open source software deployment for
business competitiveness and growth, in areas such as e-government, media, telecoms,
manufacturing, distribution and finance.
The software and services industry in Europe employs more than one million people and
accounts for five to six per cent of European GDP. It is also rapidly growing in Brazil and
China. IT analysts estimate that open source Software (OSS) will account for nearly 20% of
the industry's output within the next five years. With 70% of OSS development being carried
out in Europe and contributions growing from the Americas and Asia, the QualiPSo initiative
will ensure that competitive advantages from the development of OSS-based ICT industries
will primarily benefit Europe, Brazil and China, developing 'high-knowledge' employment
opportunities in these areas.
In this context, QualiPSo is the ever largest Open Source initiative funded by the EC. Its
ambition is to make Open source a formidable lever to strengthen Europe's competitiveness,
accelerate ICT growth, and implement the i2010 policy for growth and jobs. Viviane Reding,
EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, said: "Software technologies are
critical as they provide the added value, intelligence and flexibility underlying competitive
success in today's innovative markets. An industry today worth .67bn in the EU, software
and service is essential for our future prosperity and even our economic survival because it is
the lifeblood of all businesses and all public services".
The Qualipso project includes seven research and development areas:
1.Developing a long-lasting network of professionals caring for the quality of open source
software for enterprise computing. Six Competence Centres ¨C running the collaborative
platforms, tools and process developed in this project ¨C will be set up to support the
development, deployment and adoption of OSS by private and public Information Systems
Departments, large companies, SMEs, end users and ISVs. Of these Competence
Centres, four will be based in Europe (in Berlin, Madrid, Paris, Rome), one in China and
one in Brazil (S.o Paulo).
2. Defining methods, development processes, and business models to facilitate the use of
open source Software (OSS) by the industry.
3. Designing and implementing the "QualiPSo Factory", an integrated environment that will
facilitate and support the development of viable industrial OSS systems.
4. Developing a new Capability Maturity Model-like approach to assessing the quality of
OSS. This model will be discussed with CMM's originators, the Software Engineering
Institute (SEI), with a view to formalising it as an official extension of CMMI.
5. Implementing best practices in information management (source code, documentation,
etc.) to improve the productivity of OSS development and support.
6.Providing test suites and qualified integration stacks to demonstrate OSS interoperability
across borders of any kind: technological, semantic and organizational.
7．Providing guidelines and tools to facilitate an intellectual property tracking process with
open source, and define a coherent family of OSS licenses, compliant with national laws
and European regulations.
The first results from this four-year project are expected at the end of 2007. The Competence
Centres are planned to be deployed early in 2008.
QualiPSo is launched in synergy with Europe's technology initiatives such as NESSI and
Artemis, and will leverage Europe's existing OSS initiatives such as EDOS, FLOSSWorld,
tOSSad and others. The project will also leverage large OSS communities such as OW2 and
Morfeo. QualiPSo is open to new members and will provide other companies with the
opportunity to join at its first annual conference that will take place in autumn 2007.
More information: http://www.qualipso.org
Press Contacts :
Bull
Anne-Marie Jourdain
rue Jean Jaur¨¨s - 78340 Les Clayes sous Bois - France
Phone: +33(0)130803252
E-mail: anne-marie.jourdain@bull.net
