The guidelines in code.europa.eu for Commission-built open source software projects have been updated with additional recommendations regarding the steps to be followed when accepting and managing contributions from third-party developers.
The new guidelines are written by the Commission IP Service (CIPS, at JRC) and the European Commission’s Open Source Programme Office (OSPO, at DG DIGIT). It is a response to requests from project managers with projects on code.europa.eu - the development platform for open source projects by the institutions of the European Union. When working on the new guidelines, CIPS and the OSPO compared similar instructions from the French and German public services-led open source project and similar guidelines published by well-known international free and open source foundations. “We kept it simple”, says Gijs Hillenius, OSPO IT Project Officer. “Basically, we make sure the contributors agree with the free and open source licences of the projects”.
According to CIPS and the OSPO, there are three kinds of contributions. For the first two, like bug fixes and changes to project documentation, projects only need to check if the contributions are signed, so they can properly be attributed. For the third category - major code contributions - project managers are recommended to ensure the authors agree with the project licence and have clearance from their employers. “This is necessary because code in general is protected by copyright, which belongs to the contributing individual or entity. In order for the EC to be able to use code written by third parties, we need to receive a legal right to do so”, explains Adeline-Raluca Toader, Legal Officer at CIPS.
CIPS and OSPO prepared guidelines for both the EC’s project owners and external contributors. They can be found on the code.europa.eu’s dedicated page How to Handle Contributions For Your Project. The project owners are invited to already start using these and provide feedback to DIGIT OSPO. The CIPS and OSPO will evaluate this process over time, to make sure it is both light and effective. They will also attempt to harmonise the approach with open source units across European Member State public services.
“Nothing is set in stone forever. We understand we might need to adapt these guidelines in the near future if there is an opportunity to remove certain steps when possible and to make things easier for our open source community”, explains Gijs Hillenius. “We organise monthly information exchanges with OSPOs now in 11 European Member States, and we aim to align this approach,” Mr Hillenius says. “We will update the guidelines whenever needed.”