The regional government of Spain's Basque Country has decreed that all software produced for Basque government agencies and public bodies should be open sourced. Joinup, the European Commission's open source web site, cites an article in Spanish newspaper El Pais, saying that the only exceptions will be software that directly affects state security and a handful of projects which are being conducted in conjunction with commercial software suppliers.

Source code will be published on openirekia, the open source section of the Basque Country's open government website irekia. Irekia also has links with the corresponding web sites for the provinces of Andalusia, Extremadura, Galicia and Catalonia. Government agencies plan to use this software pool, rather than developing their own applications.

Meanwhile, the Galician government has announced that it will promote the use of open source software in companies, government agencies and public bodies. It also wants to investigate migrating Galician government agencies to an open source office suite.

(fab)