The EU Open Source Strategy
digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
The EU Open Source Strategy
1–10 of 167 posts
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#2is any money going into it, or are they just "supporting"?
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#3All great, but I would love EU and (national, local, ...) governments in the EU simply use the open source stuff already available.
Often there is an 'you must open source, unless you explain why not' and then there is some faff about why they really need to be buying more stuff from Microsoft (which is more and more cloud stuff and thus under the CLOUD act etc.)
Time to get rid of the 'unless' bit.
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#4A challenge they forgot to mention is EU‘s very own new Product Lianility Directive.
Although the Directive exempts free and open-source software (OSS) from strict product liability, it does so only if the software is developed or provided outside the course of a commercial activity.
As soon as a company integrates OSS into its own commercial product or uses it for economic purposes, the company becomes liable for any potential defects in the open-source component.
Looks Like fun for freelancers and companies who get Clients thanks to their Open Source projects, for example.
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#5I have so many mixed feelings about it. I mean there OSS software already, nobody prevents its use. It would have been better to just give OSS grants to SMEs who use OSS that originates in EU. But this is internet we are talking about, if I have an OSS repo and it contains contributions from Chinese or US citizens, is it still EU OSS? The core underlying issue is that nobody is incentivised to use EU “only”, if that changes the you will see the results. It does not even talk about devs like me who create such software.
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#6is any money going into it, or are they just "supporting"?
There is money but it's all vague and hard to get and usually with tax breaks instead of just money. I would opensource everything we built, but I have to eat something so it'll be when I die and/or the company is sold and/or we earned enough to make everyone eat during their life (with some reasonable amounts that assume hyper inflation won't happen) (it is contractually arranged). Many EU gov institutions use our software and would LOVE for us to open source it - they would immediately stop paying.
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#7All great, but I would love EU and (national, local, ...) governments in the EU simply use the open source stuff already available. Often there is an 'you must open source, unless you explain why not' and then there is some faff about why they really need to be buying more stuff from Microsoft (which is more and more cloud stuff and thus under the CLOUD act etc.) Time to get rid of the 'unless' bit.
Although I usually come up negative on my The Year of Linux Desktop comments, that would already be a starting point.
Unless EU citzens are able to easily walk into FNAC, Vobis, Cool Blue, MediaMarket, Carrefour, Publico,.... and come out with a laptop or desktop with e.g. SuSE Linux already set up, this will always be a niche thing from nerds assembling their own PCs, or finding their ways into Tuxedo and co.
And there needs to be some kind of value in actually doing that for normal people, otherwise it will be just like netbooks, most people will return them and ask for a Windows PC, after being "tricked" into getting one of those Linux PCs.
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#8All great, but I would love EU and (national, local, ...) governments in the EU simply use the open source stuff already available. Often there is an 'you must open source, unless you explain why not' and then there is some faff about why they really need to be buying more stuff from Microsoft (which is more and more cloud stuff and thus under the CLOUD act etc.) Time to get rid of the 'unless' bit.
There is definitely a lot of this happening, e.g. this is a 'collaboration suite for civil servants' that's basically a collection of existing open source projects
https://github.com/MinBZK/mijn-bureau-infra/
They show all the components they use here https://minbzk.github.io/mijn-bureau-infra/docs/category/com... and have set up guides for departments to operate it all on Kubernetes
I'm guessing from my own use of NextCloud, Matrix etc that this will simply be deemed not good enough compared to Google Workspace or Microsoft WhateverItsCalledNow as these things are pretty rough around the edges in my experience, but this looks like a good step in the right direction to me
Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#9is any money going into it, or are they just "supporting"?
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Re: The EU Open Source Strategy
#10Always the same broken pattern of the EU: throwing shitload of money to the big actors of a field without really a coherent strategy or a real control of how the funds are used.
Like that, a few companies are specialized in sucking public funds and delivering nothing. Or just the minimum to say that they did something.
Again here, no money will be directed to the thousands of core and essential OSS projects that are maintained by individuals without a corporate backing. Or to the individual contributors that are the key to these stacks.
Instead, the only one that will be able to get money, legally per EU policy, will be consortium of suckers and eventually nice but useless researchers in University...