OFE (Open Forum Europe)

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The Open Forum Europe ([1]) is a not-for-profit, independent of any organisation and was launched in March 2002 to accelerate, broaden and strengthen the use of Open Source Software (OSS) in business and government. OFE pursues the vision of an open, competitive European IT market by 2010 in line with the European Commission i2010 Strategy with the mission of facilitating open competitive choice for IT users.

OFE is supported by major IT suppliers and works closely with the European Commission and National Governments both direct and via National Associates. It also undertakes contracts designed to strengthen the development and use of OSS in Europe and has built a portal focused on UK Local Government and SME's in Denmark, Irland (OpenIreland) and UK (OpenForum Europe UK chapter)

The organisation is actively involved in the discussion around the Open Document Format (ODF), an ISO standard for electronic documents and OOXML, another document specifications, developed by Microsoft and brought forward in the ISO process through ECMA.

OFE cooperates with Free Software Foundation Europe, the Linux Professional Institute LPI as well as Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) and the ODF Alliance