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To me this is the most amazing thing people that would turn themselves inside out against communism/socialism because of the lies they have been told. When it actually comes down to it are all for communism ie open source
https://lwn.net/Articles/1053131/
(yes it seems that comments are subarticles)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because it's free? Let's talk again when all open source projects are funded and controlled by the state with zero competition between them and no consumer choice. Only one Linux distro, only one database, only one web framework, etc. And it's decided top-down from the state what to work on. I doubt though that these projects would have started in the first place in a communist setting.
"The" state, with no competition, like there's only one state? Belgium isn't big enough to realistically have its own linux, but France and Germany are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS
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When legislators start getting involved they will want to inevitably have their "own" version of something and their own SLAs and contracts.
The reason they went with Microsoft/IBM/Oracle and others back in the day for software solutions is; they know on a piece of paper what they are getting, and who they can blame if they don't get it.
With Opensource OS and software, even with auditing and stuff, there is no way to blame anyone apart from end-users. For politicians and bureacracts, that is a scary thing, as they will be the ones to blame (read: asses on the line)
The consultation is great and all but
As someone who has watched on the sidelines how Opensource governance turns projects into hydra monsters (Redhat, Jakarta EE). I wouldn't be surprised in a few years we will have a EU approved OS that is controlled by bureaucracts.
But who knows, maybe they will just become end users of a popular distro and other opensource software.
If they once again go for creating their own forks, instead of financing development of existing software then I'll know the initiative failed.
Also imho their 'questions' mentioned in the comment kinda feel like they have answer baked in - like it's foregone conclusion.
Still - I hope EU will just have a decent program financing or contributing in any shape or form to development of OSS.
It doesn't matter if the email platform a government uses is open source, but it should be able to pick a local alternative. It does not matter if the e-ID or payments app is running on an open source mobile OS, but it should be possible to run it on a non-US one.
Policy may help the European software industry, at least governments should actively work on getting away from their Microsoft addiction. Open source may be one of the options, but it is not the right model for all types of software.
Blindly preferring open source may kill otherwise viable local software businesses.
One of the most useful steps would be to support codeforges like Github on European soil, and development of the ForgeFed project, so that those forges can talk to each other.