Governmental programme boosts open source business in Finland

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In a bid to get more open source exposure inside the Finish establishment, Tekes (the Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation of the Finnish government) launched a national development programme for open source business. Programme is carried out by COSS, the Finnish Centre for Open Source Software.

Open Source Business Programme will be organised as part of the Verso technology programme, where open source has been defined as one of the focus areas. The kick-off seminar of the programme will be held in January 2007 in Helsinki.

Verso Open Source Business Programme is targeted at software providers and companies that are deploying - now or potentially - open source software in their products and services. The user organisations are expected to represent various key industries such as mechanical engineering, telecom and media.

The programme will be operated by COSS - the Finnish national centre for open source software - in partnership with Finpro, Technology Centre Hermia, Hermia Business Development and Roschier & Holmberg Attorneys. The consortium was chosen as a result of a public competitive bidding.

Désiré Athow
Désiré Athow

Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website building and web hosting when DHTML and frames were en vogue and started writing about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium. Following an eight-year stint at ITProPortal.com where he discovered the joys of global tech-fests, Désiré now heads up TechRadar Pro. Previously he was a freelance technology journalist at Incisive Media, Breakthrough Publishing and Vnunet, and Business Magazine. He also launched and hosted the first Tech Radio Show on Radio Plus.