Open source dilemma in the EU too: many see benefits, too few contribute

At its in-house conference Open Source Summit in Amsterdam, the Linux Foundation (LF) EU called for more efforts to be made for open source to finally advance Europe's digital sovereignty. Although open source technology is widespread, valued and essential for digital sovereignty, there is still a lack of coherent strategies, targeted investments, commitment from managers and political coordination in the EU. This is a missed opportunity to promote EU autonomy with "global digital commons" and secure a place in the global technology competition, warned Gabriele Columbro, Head of LF EU.

Even though modern IT, including the cloud, is largely based on open source software – there is no European company in the top ten of the Open Source Contributor Index. A recent report by the LF EU underpins with further figures that the EU could be lacking presence. According to the report, only 34 percent of the European companies and organizations surveyed have a formal open source strategy, while 22 percent have an organizational unit dedicated to free and open software. Around a quarter of the organizations employ developers who work virtually full-time on open source projects. 81 percent would see an advantage in such an investment.

Advantages are seen

In general, there appears to be no lack of insight into the advantages of open source: For example, 75 percent of respondents would believe that open source development leads to higher software quality. 69 percent also stated that the use of open source makes their organization more competitive. However, there is a discrepancy in the hierarchy levels: At the top management level, 62 percent see the advantage of open source software for their own organization – in contrast, as many as 86 percent in the workforce.

Columbro presented these figures to around 2000 participants at the Open Source Summit. He combined this with a call to close the aforementioned gaps. As an illustrative example, he used the first tangible projects for digital sovereignty within the EU such as Neonephos, Open Internet Stack, EuroStack and IPCEI-CIS (Important Project of Common European Interest – Cloud Infrastructure and Services). Open source software is the foundation of all these projects. It is no secret that developers have an influence on the direction of software. And this brings us full circle to the fact that, from the LF's perspective, this is precisely where the EU needs to show more of a flag.

Looking back and looking forward

The Open Source Summit was also an opportunity for the LF EU to look back and take stock of its work. The European counterpart of the Linux Foundation has been existing for around three years. The original idea of the LF EU was to provide a legal entity within the EU – especially for projects and requests from the public sector or even from governments. With the GDPR and the CRA, a regulatory aspect was added. The LF EU has now become a mouthpiece for open source, ensuring that the committees take the aspect of open source software into account. In addition, there is also support for projects to implement rules and standards – and now the political aspects are also becoming increasingly important.

So where do we stand? The LF EU is probably even more necessary today than it was three years ago. Lobbying in Brussels is still significant, but it has become easier. The geopolitical aspect has now also become much more important in IT and the LF EU is willing to help here too. Incidentally, this even applies to the global Linux Foundation organization: there is now also LF India. Its head – Arpit Joshipura – described the general concept in a personal conversation with the iX editorial team as follows: "Collaborate globally, innovate locally" – i.e. cooperate globally and create innovations locally.

(vbr)