Brussels, December 10, 2007 – Faithful to its aim to foster the development and use of Open Source Software (OSS) to help industries in the global race for growth, the international QualiPSo consortium organizes on 16 and 17 January 2008 its first international conference: “Boosting innovation and growth by fostering of Open Source Software”. 

“More than ever, major Industry and government players consider today Open Source as part of their strategic IT sourcing portfolio” declared Stefano De Panfilis, Chairman of the QualiPSo Consortium. “Nevertheless, there is still some reluctance to massive OSS adoption, mainly due to lack of confidence. The “grey areas” of OSS which cause major concerns to Industry are mainly legal aspects, quality aspects and business issues. A premiere in the industry, this 2-days conference will focus on the solutions to these challenges”.

Founded by a heavyweight group of ICT industry players, SMEs, governments and academics across Europe, Brazil and China, QualiPSo is an international consortium that aims to help industries and governments define and implement the technologies, processes and policies to facilitate the development and use of Open Source Software components with the same level of trust traditionally offered by proprietary software.

Organized in Rome, under the patronage of the European Commission, QualiPSo 2008 conference will gather international authorities and experts on OSS trends, reveal the first results of the QualiPSo consortium research, and be a forum for debate about OSS trust levers. It will approach Open Source from three complementary angles: political, economical and technological:

• Legal issues in Open Source
• Trustworthiness of OSS products and processes
• Business models and strategies in OSS
• Interoperability in the area of Open Source
• Networks of OSS Competence Centers
• Next-generation software forges

The conference will enable IT executives, authorities, policy makers, software project managers, IT architects and OSS community members to assess the opportunity of adopting OSS in IT strategies reach out to professionals involved in OSS and share experiences about OSS. It will also enable attendees to participate in the definition of next generation tools and process addressing trust factors in OSS. Last but not least, it will announce the creation and launch of OSS Competence Centers for helping industry adopt OSS worldwide.

For more information about the conference and registration, please download the conference program and visit our conference page.