OSS Watch
| Formation | 1 July 2003 |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Educational |
| Headquarters | Banbury Road, Oxford, United Kingdom |
| Location | |
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Parent organization
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University of Oxford |
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Staff
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4 |
| Website | oss-watch |
OSS Watch is the United Kingdom's advisory service for issues relating to free software and open source software based at the University of Oxford.
OSS Watch started as a pilot project funded by Jisc in July 2003. It has provided consultations and briefing materials about the legal, social, technical and economic aspects of open source software. OSS Watch also organises and attends conferences and workshops relating to free and open source software both within and outside the academic sector.
From 2003 until 2013, OSS Watch received funding via the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to provide support to the Further Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE) sectors. From 2013, OSS Watch is funded partly from the University of Oxford, and partly from consultancy, training and other services, and is not restricted to supporting education.
OSS Watch is not an advocacy group. Instead it seeks to provide rounded and unbiased advice and guidance, both for organisations selecting software solutions, and for those creating software.
OSS Watch provides assistance to organisations, communities and projects including
In 2013, OSS Watch began publishing Open Source Options for Education, a list of free and open source software packages that could be used in place of commonly used closed-source solutions. This built upon the work of the UK Cabinet Office, which released a list for the UK public sector.
OSS Watch provides both reactive and proactive support to a wide range of projects. Their mission is to ensure that software developed using public funding is, wherever possible, made available under free and open source licenses. Recent success stories have seen them participate in the creation of Opencast Matterhorn, a worldwide community project building audio and video capture and delivery software, as well as the migration of a W3C Widget standards compliant widget engine from an EU funded project into the Apache Software Foundations Incubator.
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