Within the context of the IDABC programme, the Commission has worked with the European Union Member States and other participants in the programme to distribute information about the use of open source software by public administrations in Europe and to promote the idea of sharing software, especially developed for and paid by public administrations via the use of open source licenses.
The most visible results of that work are the recommendations on open specifications and open source in the European Interoperability Framework, the open source observatory and reposi-tory (OSOR) and the European Union Public License (EUPL). Outside the strict context of the IDABC programme, the Commission is an important user of open source software itself and leads by example, making a number of IT solutions developed for the Commission available to others, via OSOR, under the EUPL.
