Comptoir du Libre is a collaborative website bringing together three actors :
- the local governments
- the open source software (OSS)
- the service providers on various OSS.
A local gov declares using a given OSS and has the ability to share its experience on how and why it is used inside the local gov. This happens to have great value for the other local govs as it brings confidence in using the given open source software. This significantly lowers the barrier to using OSS. The local gov can create the OSS in the Comptoir if it does not exist yet.
A service provider can declare itself as a provider on a given OSS. This is important for local gov to actually know that service providers do exist for a given piece of software, as it eases the public procurement. Service providers can create new OSS in the Comptoir, but they cannot add testimonials; this guaranties a certain quality of testimonials for the local govs. Of course, a service provider can declare itself on many OSS.
The page for a given OSS presents typical data (such as a description, the license, a link to the source code, some screenshots), and especially the list of local govs using it (including testimonies), and the list of service providers declared on that piece of software. The whole content of the Comptoir is collaborative : local govs share their experience on pieces of software, create some new OSS, a service provider declares itself as such on the OSS it works on.
We, ADULLACT, organize the whole data and invite relentlessly local govs to write new testimonials, and service providers to declare themselves. We try to identify the needs and barriers of a local govs to using OSS (e.g. knowing other local govs already using OSS, identifying service providers to lower the work on public procurement, etc). We are driven by the will to provide a complete ecosystem for the open source software to be used in the local govs.
