According to the Federal Administration's strategic principles for ICT, IT services must be provided economically and flawlessly, they must be planned in advance and ensure interoperability. In this respect, Open Source Software (OSS) do provide an interesting alternative, provided that certain preconditions have been met.

OSS is already being used in a wide range of applications in the Federal Administration. For instance, more than 10% of servers currently in use at the Federal Administration run the "Linux" operating system. OSS is also used in critical business applications, together with Closed Source Software (CSS), and also in software development. As shown in a legal opinion, the legal constraints for the procurement and use of OSS are in no respect different than for the use of CSS. This document sees no legal impediment to using OSS in public administration and, specifically, in the Federal Administration. The legal risks associated with an OSS product have to be analysed on a case-specific basis and any necessary measures taken to mitigate these.

The OSS strategy defines the Federal Administration's use of OSS for the next four years (i.e. until the end of 2007) and ensures that OSS becomes an equivalent alternative to its counterpart CSS.