We're sorry but this page doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue.
Feedback

The new Swiss Open Source Law: "Public Money Public Code" by default

Formal Metadata

Title
The new Swiss Open Source Law: "Public Money Public Code" by default
Title of Series
Number of Parts
798
Author
Contributors
License
CC Attribution 2.0 Belgium:
You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
Identifiers
Publisher
Release Date
Language

Content Metadata

Subject Area
Genre
Abstract
The Swiss Parliament passed a new law in March 2023 that requires federal government agencies to publish all government software under an open source license. The new "Federal Law on the Use of Electronic Means for the Fulfillment of Official Tasks" (EMBAG, Article 9 "Open Source Software" went into effect on January 1, 2024. It is the result of 12 years of lobbying by the Swiss Parliamentary Group for Digital Sustainability to ensure that the law not only allows governments to publish open source code, but actually makes it the default process. The presentation will outline the history of the legislative process and present the current open source activities of Swiss government agencies, also in the context of the ongoing political debate on digital sovereignty. The subsequent discussion will focus on what the Swiss government should do next to successfully implement the law. Suggestions such as establishing an Open Source Programme Office (OSPO) like the EU and launching a national Open Source development platform like OpenCoDE in Germany are on the table. More input is needed since Switzerland lacks a strong open source culture compared to other European countries.