PieFedEuropean Commission issues call for evidence on open source
Relevant links and information:
Deadline: 3/Feb/26
The European Commission has opened a “call for evidence” to help shape its European Open Digital Ecosystem Strategy. The commission is looking to reduce its dependence on software from non-EU countries:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=intcom%3AAres%282026%2969111
This call for evidence aims to gather feedback from different interested stakeholders,
to enrich the strategy with various perspectives.
More specifically, stakeholders are invited to reply to the following questions:
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the EU open-source sector? What are the
main barriers that hamper (i) adoption and maintenance of high-quality and secure
open source; and (ii) sustainable contributions to open‑source communities?
- What is the added value of open source for the public and private sectors? Please
provide concrete examples, including the factors (such as cost, risk, lock-in, security,
innovation, among others) that are most important to assess the added value.
- What concrete measures and actions may be taken at EU level to support the
development and growth of the EU open-source sector and contribute to the EU’s
technological sovereignty and cybersecurity agenda?
- What technology areas should be prioritised and why?
- In what sectors could an increased use of open source lead to increased
competitiveness and cyber resilience?
1 Comments
Comments from other communities
The problem isn’t so much dependence on software from non-EU sources as it is dependence on software from profit seeking companies that, in order to maximise their profits, do all they can to lock in users and avoid interoperability and data portability. Also, to maximise profits, they are inclined to collect and sell data from and about their customers that are not essential to the software or interests of their customers. Open source software mitigates some of these problems and it doesn’t mater where the developers reside. Dependence on services provided by non-EU companies and/or hosted outside the EU entails problems but many of those are independent of the software and where it originates. They are inherent in the entities providing the service existing in non-EU jurisdictions and being subject to control by non-EU interests.
A_norny_mousseGood.
So, free form basically.
You can see what people commented already.
I’d encourage people with FOSS/European tech savvy to participate.
olivierDefinitely better late than never. But this could have been done years ago.
This is really nice.
I wonder how existing high quality products such as gimp can get to a new level with an initiative like this.
Frankly? Europe’s NLnet, thru its grants, is already supporting and creating the backbone of the current internet open-source ecosystem.