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Identifying Europe's Critical Open Source Software - FOSSEPS

  FOSSEPS stands for Free and Open Source Solutions for European Public Services and is an initative by the EU Commission to identify the most critical open source software used by European Public Services. Open Source Software powers everything, from modern servers, to IoT, to the desktops at work and is at the heart of the European Union systems too. It is so important that the European Commission's Open Source Programme Office has decided to offer bug bounties on popular open source software as described in "European Union Will Pay For Finding Bugs In Open Source Software". The issue with the bug bounty was which apps were going to be labeled as critical or important in order to allocate resources to them. This is the same problem faced by the Open Source Security Foundation in its effort to make open source software sustainable and for which the Criticality Score Project was set up. This has already led to critical OSS projects being identified, most recently with the...
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European Union Will Pay For Finding Bugs In Open Source Software

 The European Commission's Open Source Programme Office has decided to offer bug bounties on popular open source software. What better way of acknowledging OSS's importance than by a state driven sponsorship? Open Source Software powers everything, from modern servers, to IoT, to the desktops at work and, as it seems, is at the heart of European Union systems too. While this EU bug bounty initiative is welcome, it is not something new; I covered the origins of the program in 2019, see "EU Bug Bounty - Software Security as a Civil Right". Back then the bounty was focused on OpenSSL and the Heartbleed bug. As everyone knows OpenSSL is really the cornerstone of todays internet-based communication and as such bugs in it compromise the very fabric of society. From the article: full article on i-programmer: https://www.i-programmer.info/news/149-security/15210-european-union-will-pay-for-finding-bugs-in-open-source-software.html
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OSS Good Governance Handbook-Professional Open Source Software Management

 The OSS Good Governance Handbook is intended as guide for enterprises that fosters proper use of open source software as well as safeguarding businesses from technical, legal and IP threats. The handbook is the brain child of the newly formed Open Source Program Office (OSPO) alliance, a coalition of leading European open source non-profit organizations including OW2, Eclipse Foundation, OpenForum Europe, and Foundation for Public Code, with the mission to grow awareness for open source software and promote its structured and professional management by companies and administrations. There are two perspectives on managing an open source software project; one is that of manager/maintainer/contributor and the other that of the enterprise relying on it. I've covered the first aspect in "The Open Source Guides To Managing Open Source Software Projects" which looks at another handbook, a set of guides by Github detailing the ins and outs of launching, managing, maintaining and...
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An annotated analysis of the EU Ethics Guidelines For Trustworthy AI

Having seen the potential of AI, the European Commission has released a set of ongoing guidelines on how to build AIs that can be trusted by society. We present an annotated analysis. It is refreshing to see that the EU Commission follows the trend in the technological advancements, setting up pilot groups to understand how these advancements can be used for its own prosperity. Examples of that are the EU Blockchain Observatory which we've looked into in the article  "EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum Blockchain AMA"  or the EU bug bounty initiative which we've looked into in  "EU Bug Bounty - Software Security as a Civil Right" . The Commission's instrument in this case is the High-Level Expert Group on AI (AI HLEG), an independent expert group set up in June 2018. The aim of the HLEG is to draft two deliverables:  AI Ethics Guidelines  and  Policy and Investment Recommendations . It's the former that we'll be focusing on here. The aim ...
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EUPL for state software Software Security is a Civil Right!

Like bread and beer, free software development is not for free: developers need some incentives, let’s say just the money they need for purchasing their bread and beer or for ensuring their family a decent way of life. In order to provide these incentives, the European Commission is launching in January about 15 bug bounties on Free Software projects that the EU institutions rely on. A bug bounty is a prize for people who actively search for security issues. The amount of the bounty depends on the severity of the issue uncovered and the relative importance of the software. This EU initiative is part of the Free and Open Source Software Audit (FOSSA) project. "Software Security as a Civil right", Nikos Vaggalis wrote in i-programmer news, quoting the scheme that Julia Reda (MEP) pushes forward. Mission-critical F/OSS applications' audits should be state funded in order to serve the wider good. full article on joinup.ec.europa.eu
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EU Bug Bounty - Software Security as a Civil Right

A State-sponsored bug bounty comes as refreshing news in that it shows that amongst the bureaucrats there are tech savvypeople who understand the true value of OSS software to society, and as such the impact when its security goes wrong.  This EU initiative is part of the Free and Open Source Software Audit (FOSSA) project, thanks to Julia Reda MEP of the EU Pirate Party, who started the project thinking that enough is enough after severe vulnerabilities were discovered in key infrastructure components like OpenSSL. This prompted her to involve the EU Commission in contributing to the security of the Internet. full article here
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