Netherlands

Netherlands appear to have one of the most Free Software-oriented e-government and procurement policies in EU.

From December 2007 the Dutch parliament has been using exclusively Open Standards. The OSOSS ("open source as a part of the software strategy") Program was created to help stimulate the use of Open Standards by public administrations and provide information on Free Software.

In the Action plan published in 2007 the Dutch Cabinet intends to encourage the use of Free Software and Open Standards within the public and semi-public sectors. The key focus here is: “use Open Standards, or come up with a very good reason why this is not possible”. All institutions that still insist on the use of proprietary software must provide reasons for maintaining it until a later date.

In October 2016, the lower house of Dutch Parliament adopted a law proposal making mandatory the use of Open Standards for public administrations. The legislative proposal also instructs the government to actively promote the use of Free Software.

Positive examples of publicly funded software, released as Free Software in Netherlands, include the following:

* A web application for searching and showing geographically labelled information Geozet.

* Open government data portal that is enhanced integration of CKAN and Drupal.

* A OpenDocument Format testing website is in the process of development, whilst all the developed code of the project is being published under AGPL v. 3.

The Netherlands has launched a civil society initiative around Free Software tools and packages at a site called Pleio - since 2014.