Switzerland now requires all government software to be open source sorry my face is covering the word open there um you you can read it's cool thing I'm actually quite excited about this the idea that things that are funded by public money should be public something I generally agree with and I'm actually pretty excited to see where we end up with this so let's take a read see what they're doing and get an idea of how Switzerland is changing the way that they build software for the government the US remains reluctant to work with open source
but European countries are bolder this has been sad there have been a small number of US Open Source projects from the government yeah a lot of the typography stuff the US government did is all open source they have like the US web design system that is fully open source uh the license is a bit weird because it's government but it is open source and I believe they're relatively chill I haven't fully read it or know what the license is based on but uh a few parts of the project are not in the public domain so
they specify certain things that aren't but otherwise the files licensed under the MIT everything in the library other additional stuff so it's cool that they call all that out this is a set of fonts and other resources for doing UI design from the US government that's open source and I think this is awesome I would love for the government to do more stuff like this if they're spending tax money to build things those things they build should benefit the general public in the US oh yeah the BBC also has a bunch of cool open source
BBC's has an open sour or they github's open source code use on their public facing services including like really helpful screenshot comparison tools actual ways to render responsive images that are sane especially back in the day when that was way harder all of these things are useful resources that government money was used to create I like the idea that they also decide to share it alongside simra the BBC's open source web application oh yeah the Thai website I forgot that this whole site is open source which is dope that's so cool if you're looking for
like a big complex web repo that you can learn for reference here you go it's open source the point I'm making here is there are efforts to open source things in governments but the idea of all government software being open sourced is a new thing that I'm excited to read a bit more about several European countries are betting on open source software in the United States eh not so much in the latest news from across the Atlantic Switzerland has taken a major step forward with its federal law on the use of electronic means for the
Fulfillment of government tasks again if the government's using software that they paid to have written sounds like going to be open source now this groundbreaking legislation mandates using open source software in the public sector interesting so this is anything that they choose to use as well so if they have a service they're paying for they have to use the open source alternative also Germany ditched Microsoft for Linux and Libra office very interesting not use Google Drive but I can respect it this new law requires all public bodies to disclose the source code for software developed
by or for them unless thirdparty rights or security concerns prevent it this public money public code approach aims to enhance government's operations transparency security and efficiency it's not super clear yet if this means you literally can't use use close Source software that you're paying for or not I'm curious to see how that develops making this move wasn't easy it began in 2011 when the Swiss Federal Supreme Court published its Court application open justice jusa under an open source license interesting open jusa currently includes various modules for managing Court decisions and other documents as well as
enriching and completing them with additional metadata that's actually cool an open-source system for managing court documents that's a cool thing that only a government would make I see as open source I'm curious whether governments actually use it the proprietary legal software company web law wasn't happy about this though makes sense if they're charging money for their service and the government just open source an alternative doesn't surprise me there were heated political and legal fights for more than a decade finally the emag was passed in 2023 now the law not only allows the release of Open
Source sofware by the Swiss government or its contractors but it also requires the code be released under an open source license unless the rights of third parties or security related reasons would exclude or restrict this it is my understanding from reading this thus far that it is software being commissioned to be created by the Swiss government that falls under these laws so if they were asking web law to make a new product for them that would have to be open sourced Professor Dr Matias sturmer hopefully I got that right head of the Institute of public
sector transformation at the burn University of applied sciences led the fight for this law he held it as a great opportunity for government the IT industry and society sturmer believes everyone will benefit from this regulation as it reduces vendor lockin for the public sector allows companies to expand their digital Business Solutions and potentially leads to reduced it costs in improved services for the taxpayers there actually an interesting point here where uh there's a lot of vendor lock in in the government because once they've made a commitment to a given solution they're often pretty locked in
just by the nature of like how much data and how much money it costs to move off like if your organization in the government has a budget and it costs more than that budget to move to a different solution you're stuck indefinitely but if your software is open source and you can theoretically move and host wherever this makes pricing for government services significantly more competitive I hadn't even thought of that angle before it's interesting they called that out in addition to mandating open source software the emag also requires the release of non-personal and non-security sensitive
government data as open government data this dual open by default approach marks a significant Paradigm Shift towards greater openness and practical reuse of software and data implementing the emag is expected to serve as a model for other countries considering similar measures it aims to promote digital sovereignty and encourage Innovation and collaboration within the public sector I was a little skeptical going and I'm liking this more and more in the angles that they're going at with it the Swiss Federal Statistics office is leading the Law's implementation but the organizational and financial aspects of the OSS releases
still need to be clarified other companies in Europe have long supported open source for example in 2023 the French President macron stated that we love open source he also loves one of my favorite artists ever DJ medy because they played signatune at the Olympic opening which broke my heart Medi passed away tragically over 10 years ago now I was in high school so way longer and hearing his song played at the Olympics was emotional respect for mcon for having similar tastes in music and open source I'm never going to say that right thank the FBI
if you're American thank you they use Linux on their PCS that's actually kind of cool the European Union has long worked on securing open source software via the eu's free and open source software auditing project FAA look at that where are you Aiden FAA bot chat beat me to it FAA mentioned also this article looks interesting what's the theory for why people don't use desktop Linux this might be a free video in the future let me know in the comments if you think that's worth doing a video on anyways that said it's not all Wine
and Roses in the EU there's some worry that the European commission will cut funding for the ngi zero Commons fund an important funding source for open source projects if all funded projects are open source it's a different angle we don't need a fund for just open source stuff if all things the government pays for have to be open source I would be okay as weird as it sounds to say I'd be okay with killing this open source program I am if everything has to be open source now and all funding is now for open source
in the US there's some support for open source but not nearly as much as in Europe the federal source code policy for instance requires federal agencies to release at least 20% of new custom developed code AS open source software however it doesn't mandate the use of Open Source I didn't know about this 20% rule that's actually kind of cool is there more info on this found it here publishing all new code AS open source allows the GSA to exceed the omb's goal that 20% of code be published as open source interesting that that's like a
formally stated Cod or goal also have code. Json interesting this is all of their releases very interesting all rails didn't know the government used so much rails hurts good to know though fascinating stuff final col in the article is that Switzerland is well positioned but we need to see Europe and the US move no man you to the UK sorry all regardless I actually quite like this I personally really like the idea of government money being spent in a way that benefits the population of that place the most and the source code could be very
beneficial to lots of people be it soft developers working independently businesses that already exist users with specific accessibility needs all of these types of things are easier if there's good open source references and I really like the idea of getting more big open- Source projects as many great open source things as there are there aren't many examples of big open source applications like actual services like Twitter that you use most of those tend to be closed Source they might open source some libraries but you can't see how the whole thing works and that's a really
unique opportunity here is that these government projects can good examples of gigantic software projects that are maintained well built well and most importantly open source so we can look at it and reference it there's a lot to think about here hopefully I covered enough of it let me know what you guys think in the comments and until next time peace NS
