The Galician Regional Government, an autonomous community of Spain, published in September their “Guía de boas prácticas para liberación de contidos e software” (Guide to Good Practices for Content and Software Release) under initiative of the Agency for Technological Modernisation of Galicia (Amtega).
The guide is aimed at the general public and uses illustrations and examples to help make the topics understandable for all. In addition to the two main sections—one for the publication of content and one on the release of software—the introduction also gives an overview of the legal status of software and the relevant aspects of copyright law.
Importantly, the guide is published in Galician, a language which has equal status in the region alongside Spanish. This initiative is thus the latest in a number of digital projects which have been launched to respond to a lack of resources in Galician.
One example is the Trisquel GNU/Linux distribution which was launched in 2005, back when there was very little software in Galician. Developed together with the University of Vigo, the specific focus was on creating a complete operating system for use in education with full support for Galician. Today, there is Galician language support in all major operating systems and in most of the very popular applications, but it is still often absent in newer or less-popular applications. When the software is open source, anyone can choose to work on adding translations for Galician or any other language. The Trisquel GNU/Linux distribution has become independent and is still maintained and developed today with a new focus on being a 100% free software / open source operating system.
The initiatives of the region have shown how Open Source software can fulfil certain institutional and cultural needs that weren’t achieved through products owned by single companies. For further information on their Digital policy, read their strategy for 2030: https://amtega.xunta.gal/sites/w_amtega/files/documento-egd2030.pdf (In Galician).