EU OS: Community-led Proof-of-Concept for a free Operating System for the EU public sector

EU OS is a Proof-of-Concept for the deployment of a Fedora-based Linux operating system with a KDE Plasma desktop environment in a typical public sector organisation. Other organisations with similar requirements or less strict requirements may also learn from this Proof-of-Concept.

It is led by a community of volunteers and enthusiasts. The project goal is to become a project of the European Commission.

Despite the name, EU OS is technically not a new operating system. Distrowatch lists currently over 250 Linux operating systems (‘distributions’) and their various flavours, spins or subvariants are not even counted in. The added value of EU OS is a different one:

• a common Linux OS as a base for all EU OS users with options to layer on top modifications (national layer, regional or sector-specific layer, organsation-specific layer)
• a common desktop environment
• a common method to manage
• users and their data
• software
• devices

The aims of this project are very similar to that of SAOSS (South African Open Source Software) but the advantage of the EU is that there are a number of firmly established OSS implementations already in place in a few countries within their public sector.

In South Africa, most of the initiatives within the public sector have died out, apart from maybe one municipal district in the Eastern Cape. I was part of one initiative in the South African public sector, and it passed with flying colours, but a change of political leadership very quickly killed off the project just one month before it was due for its permanent switch over.

So, I have three vital pieces of advice for any open source project within the public sector, and they have nothing at all to do with the technology:

1. Strike hard, fast, and with momentum when you have willing political leadership in place. If leadership changes there is a very good chance you could lose your sponsors, because in government a change of leadership does mean a different stance/focus (unlike in the private sector).
2. Do not take things for granted. A lack of opposition does not mean the private sector is behind you. Quite often with government, the Big Tech proprietary companies will stop engaging with IT managers, and they will engage at a political and non-technical level instead.
3. Smaller, local companies have a good chance of benefitting from open source when government drives it. You need to get them actively on your side with regard to training, support, customisation, etc. Standardisation is important here as they want to invest their time in one standard suite of products, not a wild west of different competing products. One approach is to involve them in this decision-making. They can still compete to provide the services.

See eu-os.gitlab.io/category/uncat…
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