Joinup glossary
O
Observatories are a tool, designed to gather information on the state of play of digital public administration and interoperability activities. These observatories, such as NIFO and OSOR, enable stakeholders to stay up-to-date on the latest developments and trends in digital public services.
An ontology is a semantic interoperability asset. It is a formal representation of the concepts within one domain, the properties of these concepts, and the relationships between these concepts. In addition to a data model, an ontology allows reasoning (i.e., make deductions) about the concepts, terms, and relationships).
The fundamental principle of the Open Source Licensing is that it prohibits anyone from exclusively exploiting a given piece of work. In order to reflect this, a legal framework was originally developed to guarantee the openness by a certain set of principles.
The Open Source Observatory (OSOR) aims to become a trustworthy observatory that provides Free and Open-Source Software(FOSS) expertise and information as well as serve as a middle-ground to connect European Public Administrations with other relevant stakeholders. To reach this objective, OSOR supports a dynamic community and further promotes the use of Free and Open Source software.
Open Source Software (OSS) is software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software licence that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software. Open source software is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner.
An owner is responsible for the animation and management of a Collection or Solution. They have the responsibility and authorisation to manage memberships and to review the content that has been created within the Collection or Solution.