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Baden-Württemberg enhancing its position as Open-Source-cluster

Baden-Württemberg in Germany enhances the development of its Open-Source-Cluster with a package of new initiatives. The MFG (Center of Competence for Media and IT) is the motor behind some of the measures taken. The aim is to create competitive advantages and employment through the use of open-source-software in research, the economy and administration.

The creation of a Linux Solution Group (LiSoG), with participating companies like IBM, MySQL, Novell, Siemens Business Services and RedHat or an initiative "Linux Kommunale" aim to enforce the use of open-source softwares like Linux and to spur the development of the german-speaking open-source market. This market displays consistent growth which creates opportunities for development in IT-companies in Baden-Württemberg. One of their projects focuses on providing the regional municipalities with cost effective and easy to implement solutions ("Linux Kommunale"): for example communication systems for offices, specific procedures being transported to the open-source platform Linux or being developped especially for Linux.

Another initiative promoted by the MFG is bwcon:boss (Baden-Württemberg Open Source LayerS ) - a platform to foster and develop the implementation of Open-Source Software. Among their activities are workgroups for software companies, system integrators and application companies who exchange their data among each other and develop solutions for client or financial services - in open-source based procedures. The ministry of economy of Baden-Württemberg trys in this way to improve the collaboration and networking in the value chain of software companies.

Application companies receive concrete value through the database ebigo.de which contains about 11.000 IT and E-business companies in the South-West of Germany and many open-source companies among them.

Sources (information only available in German): Do it online- open-source and Do it online -press service.


The EU is also providing fundings for a project in open-source in order to make European software development more competitive in the global market. The European Commission provides 2.2 million euro for a project to build new tools for simplifying complex IT projects based on open-source software like Linux.

The EDOS (Environment for the Development and Distribution of free Software) project partners hope to shorten the development cycles and lower the cost for large-scale modular software projects. By promoting open source software, Member States and the European Commission are hoping to counter the outsourcing of software development to third countries. For more information on this project visit CORDIS.