European Open Digital Ecosystems

For more than 15 years, we have been developing and operating open-source tools for CSIRTs and the wider cybersecurity community in Europe and beyond. Through CIRCL, we have contributed to building a sustainable open-source ecosystem that directly supports detection, analysis, information sharing, incident response, and remediation.

Filed in French · English published by the European Commission

Dear European Commission / EU Policy Representatives, I would like to provide feedback on the importance of supporting open-source virtualization solutions in Europe, using Proxmox VE as a concrete example of how such technologies deliver clear advantages for European businesses, public institutions, and citizens.

The Call for evidence says: The EU faces a significant problem of dependence on non-EU countries in the digital sphere. From my point view, the cause is that for a long time, the EU had a limited view on aspects of innovation and freedom in markets under the competition aspect. Currently the dominant factor of innovation is the monetization aspect.

Open-source virtualisation offers tangible benefits to both private companies and public administrations, combining cost reduction, operational flexibility and independence from proprietary suppliers. A company can use platforms based on Linux and PROXMOX VE KVM to consolidate dozens of physical servers in a few virtualised hosts.

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Opitz-Consulting is a medium-sized IT consulting company based in Germany with a strong European orientation. We welcome the Commissions initiative to strengthen European open digital ecosystems as a key lever for digital sovereignty, resilience and SME competitiveness. Open-source software is an integral part of our daily delivery.

Europe represents a market of 450 million potential users of European IT services based on open-source projects. At the same time, due to the lack of an incubator like Silicon Valley, the regulatory differences that still exist between countries, and the lack of investment, Europe is struggling to create open-source alternatives, even for the most common products, that could contribute to achieving independence in…

OW2, a EU-originated independent non-profit open source association based in France (note we contribute as "business association" but we are not just that, as open to individuals and public bodies: just, we are not an official "NGO"), would like to contribute by focusing on a few key points, placing emphasis on what can be done for: - Public procurement, research, software and data produced by administrations, and…

Q1: Strengths and Weaknesses of the EU Open-Source Sector 1. The fundamental barrier is a structural innovation-maintenance funding gap. Our analysis of open research infrastructure grant funding demonstrates that while R&D receives over 64% of direct grant awards, operations and maintenancethe essential work of keeping critical tools operationalremains consistently underfunded.

Higher education is a critical sector for EU tech sovereignty that requires dedicated attention in this strategy. Over 90% of European universities rely on Learning Management Systems (LMS) daily. A 2024 peer-reviewed study found that 98% of higher education institutions in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland use open-source LMS (Moodle, ILIAS, Stud.IP), with Moodle being the clear market leader.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operate under strict budgetary, operational and human-resource constraints. For them, open source is not an ideological preference, but a pragmatic and strategic tool to remain competitive, resilient and independent in an increasingly digital economy.

Gaining technological independence is vitally important for Europe. We must reduce our dependence on external technology companies and grow and promote our own technological fabric. We are currently reliant on solutions from other countries that have proven to be unreliable and have us technologically subjugated. Companies such as Proxmox are the foundation for growth and independence.

The advantages offered by the free code range from the possibilities of own adaptation to the reduction of licences.Proxmox VE is a great example of how the freedom of software and the true quality allow us every day to offer European solutions without relying on US licenses and companies that are also very competitive. There are also other NextCloud, Matrix and a very long number of others.

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No vendor lock-in Customers can run the software on any hardware and can submit patches to add additional functionality that automatically benefits all others. High transparency code can be inspected, audited and improved by anyone. Source code is publicly auditable, enabling quicker vulnerability detection and remediation.

Feedback Initiative “Towards European Open Digital Ecosystems” 1. Strengths and Weaknesses of the EU Open Source Sector The European Open Source Sector has clear strengths: a mature technological base, active development communities and broad adoption in critical layers of digital infrastructure (virtualisation, networks, storage, cybersecurity).

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Amadeus is driving the digitalization of the travel and transport industry. Among the company's technological objectives is to leverage open source to avoid duplicating nondifferentiating technologies and build shared, reusable components that benefit the industry.

As manager of a French IT services company, I would like to stress the urgent need to strengthen the European Open Digital Ecosystems (EODE). In a global context marked by growing geopolitical tensions and increased reliance on technologies, trust in digital infrastructure has become a strategic challenge. 1.

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Aeioros Servicios is a Spain-based IT services company working primarily with public administrations and organizations delivering critical services. Based on our practical experience, we strongly support the European Commissions initiative to strengthen open digital ecosystems as a cornerstone of European cloud and technological sovereignty.

Open-source cloud infrastructure is a practical way to achieve real European digital sovereignty. From my professional experience, the key issue is not where data is hosted, but who controls the software stack, update cycles, and exit conditions. Open-source systems allow full cost transparency and predictable budgeting.

Feedback for the European Commission European Open Digital Ecosystems 1. Key Challenges for Open-Source Adoption in the EU Lack of Trust and Awareness: Private companies often hesitate to adopt European open-source solutions (e.g., Proxmox, Wazuh) due to concerns about long-term support, security, and compatibility, especially in an environment dominated by global players like Microsoft.

We have been working and offering free, European or even French solutions as a priority for 25 years. We regret that these solutions are not always recognised and that, at the same time, our governments, too many administrations and companies of all sizes sign framework partnerships and agreements with the GAFAM or often American multinationals without considering alternatives and without taking into account our…

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We believe that open source software and hardware, and the adoption of open standards, are essential for building a more open, transparent, and user-centric digital future for Europe. They protect us from risks like vendor lock-in, monopolies, geopolitical dependencies, privacy intrusions, security vulnerabilities, anti-consumer practices, and much more.

It is very important to promote opensource in Europe in order to be independent from other continents. It is also important that opensource is truly free and independent. The advantage of opensource is that identified vulnerabilities are fixed quickly, unlike in proprietary software, because the sourcecode is open and available to everyone. Another advantage is that the total cost of ownership is low.

I own a small Polish IT company that supports companies and organisations to build, maintain and secure their digital infrastructure. In our daily work, we strongly focus on open-source solutions as they enable small and medium-sized enterprises to grow without excessive licensing costs and without relying on fully commercial, supplier-controlled ecosystems.

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Open source software plays an important role in maintaining market balance. Taking into account, for example, the last two years of the development of VMware, which was the dominant player in the field of IT infrastructure virtualisation, there has been a fundamental change in pricing since the acquisition by Broadcom.

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As a European IT service provider and certified partner deploying open-source infrastructure solutions for SMEs, public administrations and regulated sectors, we strongly support the European Open Digital Ecosystems initiative. From our operational experience, open-source infrastructure software is already a mature and reliable foundation for European digital sovereignty.

We are Sailboard. We support open. We are the Dutch open source company heading towards open ecosystems leading, enabling and engaging open ecosystems. At Sailboard we work together with our customers and partners to build open ecosystems, which focuses on (open) leadership for open source software, licenses and standards.

Practical experience with open-source software (Proxmox, Zabbix). In our experience as an IT company providing technical support and consultancy to SMEs and organisations of different sizes, the use of infrastructure-level open-source software such as Proxmox and Zabbix has been essential to delivering reliable, sustainable, and secure services to our customers.

I believe open source is critical to both independence as well as an interdependent world. With Next Generation Internet to start projects and Sovereign Tech Fund to sustain them the structure is there to finance an open source world. However, i believe the size of the effort is still too small to really compete with Big Tech. I hope it can scale up, and maybe there can be other formats as well.

Open source software is essential for Europes digital sovereignty, competitiveness, and cyber resilience. Solutions like Proxmox VE show how a fully open-source infrastructure stack can replace costly proprietary platforms without hidden licensing fees, reducing total cost of ownership for SMEs and public administrations.

Open source virtualisation is very important because the past has shown the importance of independence in the choice of software. Large corporations want to plunge firms into inevitable dependency and then attract prices. See, for example, Broadcom or Microsoft. Proxmox, as a virtualisation solution, is very powerful, has a large community and offers an acceptable price to each customer, with support if needed.

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We are a group of developers working on open-source reverse engineering and disassembler tools (Rizin and Capstone). Tools like these are prerequisites in the offensive and defensive cybersecurity field, as well as in the archiving and restoration of software with lost source code.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to use the current initiative to draw attention to necessary solutions for the management, organisation and safe operation of IT. The ever-growing service management sector is currently dominated by large non-European providers, which are increasingly pushing their customers to use cloud models.

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Practical experience from high-volume digital employment platforms Across several initiatives focused on employment, activation and lead-based matching, we operate digital platforms that process large volumes of registrations per day, handle continuous user inflow, and rely on automation, data-driven workflows and open technologies.

Key challenges are correctly identified as dependency on non-EU digital infrastructure, underutilized EU developer communities, and barriers to scaling open source solutions. However, terminology matters; first recommendation is to consistently use "FLOSS" (Free and Libre Open Source Software) rather than the more generic adjective "open source", as it better captures the public good nature and freedom principles at…

European independence through open source software is what we stand for in our daily lives. And we would like to talk about our difficulties through this consultation. We represent accessibility, especially of the cultural environment, for people with disabilities. We can only see that the accessibility and ergonomics of open source software is not at the level, with some exceptions.

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Strengths and weaknesses of the EU FLOSS sector: The greatest Fortaleza is pure meritocracy (developers lead according to their contributions to the code, and if someone disagrees, they can do a fork freely). Moreover, innovation is very rapid in established communities such as Debian/GNOME, all with full transparency. It is usually developed for pleasure and to improve the code. In many cases it is altruistic.

Filed in Spanish · English published by the European Commission

One topic to consider within the digital sovereignty conversation is funding sources and sustainability. While many FOSS projects start out as volunteer groups, successful projects often reach a cross roads where they feel that growth and sustainability means becoming a company. While this is a model that works for many projects, it is not the only one.

Free and Open source software programs are key to businesses all around the world. Most innovation uses part of this software components, as they are easy to use and widely understood by developers. The world wide web (not that closed garden that US corporations want us to live on) thrives on free and open source.

# EU-ORG: a European Framework for cross-border non-profits ## The Paradox of Open-Source Governance in Europe Europe leads the world in open-source contributions, with studies consistently showing that European developers and organizations are among the most active globally.

In the Netherlands we have legislation that says "Open Source unless". Where unless is only in very specific cases. It would help the Open Source industry a lot when this rule would apply for the entire EU. Public money public code meaning that when a governmental organization spends public money is should try to spent it on Open Source and give it back to the public instead of buying licenses.

Europe has strong open-source technologies, but deployment, operation and sustainable financing are holding back real breakthroughs. We call for: Open source must finally be treated as a critical digital infrastructure in procurement, promotion and operation for greater security, independence and digital sovereignty.

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I am writing in the name of LINBIT HA-Solutions GmbH. LINBIT is an Austrian company that writes and publishes open-source infrastructure software. The company was established in 2001, so it has been in existence for 25 Years. I adjusted the business multiple times. Today, we are about 35 FTEs (employees and freelancers) in Austria and about 10 FTEs in the USA.

Open source follows the same principles as science: transparency, peer review and verifiability. Some domains, such as encryption, can only be trusted when the code is open. Closed-source alternatives are comparable to mathematics without proof. This also affects digital literacy. Many users appear technically skilled while remaining fully dependent on opaque systems.

Digital commons (collectively governed tech/AI systems and shared data infrastructures) represent a practical and proven alternative to corporate-controlled technology. Europe stands at a crossroads: we can continue depending on extractive, foreign platforms that concentrate power and profit, or we can cultivate an ecosystem of shared tools and organizations that serves the public interest.

FOSS software is essential to our mission and our commitment to digital sovereignty. The public sector's subscriptions to the US giants have been diverting taxpayer money to fund a system that ruins the European tech sector. A comparatively small investment in funding secure European alternatives would have an disproportionate positive impact for Europe, and would be a much more appropriate use of public funds. 1.

Question 1 I have been facing 2 obstacles for several years now. The first one in France is the use in schools mainly of BigTechs tools to offer digital tools to pupils. Primary, secondary, secondary, etc. my son has not escaped me from the hegemony of microsoft or google tools. He has been in private school since the beginning of his schooling and I do not know whether the issue is the same in public school.

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VDMA represents 3500 German and European machinery companies. The industry stands for innovation, export orientation and SMEs. The companies employ a total of around 3 million people in the EU-27, more than 1.2 million of them in Germany alone. This makes the machinery sector the largest employer among the capital goods industries, both in the EU-27 and in Germany.

With competitiveness as the current political terms bread and butter, the absence of retention of ownership from the discourse misses a core point of the present EU economic and social reality. An unprecedented change of ownership is about to put the European economy up for sale, not only with startups and scaleups but also a silver tsunami of European baby boomer business owners retiring in the coming decade.

IFTAS welcomes this initiative and strongly supports the Commissions recognition of open-source software as a strategic component of digital sovereignty, security, and innovation. The EU open-source sector benefits from a rich and diverse developer community, with strong alignment to European values - particularly data protection, human rights, and participatory governance.

In the context of ILS Integrated Library Systems, i.e. software systems for libraries/libraries, there are very large American providers that mostly only offer cloud solutions – so all user data also end up in the hands of the American authorities. Alternatively, there are a number of European providers supporting, among others, Open Source Software zb Koha (https://koha-community.org/).

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Deuxfleurs is the team behind "Garage", a cloud storage alternative to Amazon AWS S3, and "Aerogramme", an email service alternative to Microsoft Exchange. Both are open-source software projects. These solutions allow us and others to provide high-profile services such as hosting official websites for the french cities of Rennes and Marseille, using their own hardware and without requiring datacenter-grade…

In helping your economy break free of domination, you help the whole world. It's somewhat understandable that the Frankenstein monsters of Big Tech have a lock on the USA, since they are the "home teams" there. But Europe? How incredibly shortsighted to invest in one's own bondage for decades, a process that continues.

Let's start with 'open', does not mean 'for free'. Not the code itself, but the application thereof should have a recognised market value. This means it can be sustainable, and marketable. This is often the reason why it ends up within a larger proprietary stack. Without working the market for both the fit, the value and the pursuit of making the code profitable in itself, it's just code.

As an attachment, I explain why ‘ecosystem’ and ‘open’ are contradictory. Above all, however, I am proposing a European internet solution of EUR 0, with users also being providers: who would not like to pay NON-PLUS for digital network subscriptions because they are a provider of storage space through a Network Attached Storage (NAS), who?

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Open-source technologies have strong potential to enhance the EUs control over its digital infrastructure, reduce dependencies on non-EU suppliers, improve supply chain transparency and support cybersecurity vulnerability management. By design, open-source software is based on transparency and auditability, allowing users to inspect, modify and share source code.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are a tax consultancy firm in Graz and always try to process our clients’ data carefully and securely. We note that the IT infrastructure for running a tax consultancy firm is highly dependent on Microsoft products.

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Confartigianato Imprese is the most representative Italian organisation of crafts and micro and SMEs and one of the most important social partners in Italy. At national level, it has 104 local associations, 21 regional federations, 1.206 offices and 10.700 employees, offering different types of services to over 1.5 million craftsmen and small entrepreneurs and almost 700.000 businesses.

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We call on the European Union to establish a Digital Rights Fund (EDRF) in the next MFF as a strategic complement to existing initiatives on digital infrastructure and sovereignty, aiming to reduce Europes dependencies and strengthen its digital autonomy.

### Strengths and weaknesses of the EU open-source sector The EU open source sector benefits from strong collaboration, alignment with EU values, and a need for digital sovereignty. These strengths are particularly relevant for grid operators like Enexis, Alliander and Stedin, which depend on resilient, interoperable, and secure digital infrastructure.

From the perspective of a European provider of enterprise-grade Linux and open-source lifecycle management solutions, strengthening Europes digital sovereignty requires a stronger focus on operational control and long-term sustainability of open-source infrastructure. Open-source software already forms the backbone of critical digital systems.

As IT director of the Caritasverband für die Diözese Speyer e.V. [Caritas Association for Diocese Speyer], I take the following position: We do not want to become dependent on companies that store their data outside the EU. This is why we operate our server systems in our own data centres and, where possible, on premises. M365 is a thorn in our eyes, as well as the whole Microsoft Cloud infrastructure.

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Europe has the paradox of having one of the most developed open source ecosystems in the world, and buying most of its software from the US. It benefits from many highly competent SMEs, mastering high-quality open source solutions, but these companies are underfunded, often excluded from public procurement and the purchase of large groups and often in competition with much more funded foreign companies.

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As a company with more than a decade of experience in open-source software and projects, we strongly believe that open source is not only a foundation for more transparent and open business in Europe, but also a key enabler of global, fair, and sustainable digital ecosystems. Open source allows communities worldwide to collaborate on software security in a reliable and verifiable way.

Cloud Temple defends open source as a pillar of European digital sovereignty. Europe has real assets: world-class research institutes, a fabric of SMEs and integrators that maintain critical infrastructures, and a culture of transparency that contrasts with the black boxes of US hyperscalers. But these forces face major obstacles. The ecosystem remains fragmented, without the necessary firepower to compete.

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Health IT applications have mission-critical components that directly support clinical decision-making, patient identification, medication management, diagnostics, care coordination, and continuity of operations.

When software runs hospitals, energy grids, public services and the devices we rely on every day, it should be treated like any other critical infrastructure. Open-source software is a strong foundation because it allows independent inspection, shared improvemen and real choice - but openness alone is not enough.

I am the founder of Sensative AB, a Swedish technology company established in 2013. Since 2014, we have been developing Yggio, an IoT and data integration platform created to empower societies, cities, and organisations to become digitally sovereign, resilient, and effectively digitalised.

1. & 2. Introduction & Context As a European SME (know.bi) specializing in data engineering, we submit this evidence based on our dual role as co-founders and core maintainers of the Apache Hop project and as developers of Putki, an enterprise-ready distribution designed for the European market.

In the current context of European higher education, the shift to Open Source solutions addresses several policy, economic and regulatory challenges. First of all, lopen Source enables institutions to strengthen their independence by avoiding excessive subjection to suppliers, often from outside Europe, while retaining control over digital tools and strategic choices.

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Don't think the digital Euro analogue, but as a digital platform. So far, the digital euro is mainly seen as a payment alternative to PayPal, Visa, and co. This view is too narrow and misses its real potential. But: Data is the gold of the 21st century. Every day, all of us create data for large tech companies, which earn billions from it.

Initiative Towards European Open Digital Ecosystems Contribution of ayedo Cloud Solutions GmbH Die ayedo Cloud Solutions GmbH is a German cloud service provider focusing on sovereign, secure and scalable cloud native infrastructure.

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HOP - Stop Planned Obsolescence is a French environment protection association. Since 2015, it advocates for long-lasting products. It is directly linked to the construction of circular economy tools such as the repairability and durability indexes as well as the French repair bonus. It represents a community of more than 60.000 people. HOP is also part of the Right to Repair campaign's steering group.

As far as we are concerned: We are the manufacturer of the Open Source Wiki software BlueSpice. Since 2007, we have been building collaborative solutions and knowledge databases (including AI-based ones) for all sectors, based on the MediaWiki software (=Wikipedia software).

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*** Summary for submission *** Open source delivers substantial value to both the public and private sectors by enabling reuse, improving interoperability and reducing dependence on single vendors. It strengthens supply-chain resilience and digital sovereignty.

The EU needs a trusted and easy to join ecosystem where OSS is the standard, where service providers compete having healthy business models to improve the software and help newcomers to get started. EU rules and incentives need to make sure the community is moving forward as a whole, while allowing forks that enable niche developments.

"Stowarzyszenie QGIS Polska" is a Polish NGO focused on open source GIS (QGIS) and open geospatial standards. We consider this initiative critically important and we are ready to support the EU with practical, hands-on expertise. * The EU has, for years, reinforced a dangerously high dependency on software ecosystems controlled outside Europemainly the United States and increasingly China.

Strengths: - strong ties with public institutions + a value framework emphasizing transparency, equity, and democratic governance - legal harmonization to build & connect actors across the EU (e.g. non-profit law) - EU open source (OS) community has a globally competitive edge; even complex hardware (magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound) has reached clinical performance and inform certified devices…

1. STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, BARRIERS -Strengths: EU has historic strength in grassroots engineering/GDPR values. Technical superiority is evident in Drupal/Mautic powering the global web. -Weaknesses: Critical "productization gap." We lack the marketing muscle & "enterprise packaging" of US competitors (Adobe/Salesforce). Private sector often views OS as "hobbyist" vs polished suites.

Added Value (question 2) As an SME working on critical infrastructure around the world, our business heavily relies on open source software to deliver effective and cost-efficient solutions, to an extent which is hard to be overestimated. Without the tireless work of numerous open source projects, I doubt we would be able to innovate at the pace and with the reliability our clients rightly demand.

Coming from a background in EU ICT RIA/IA collaborative projects for over 15 years, the way forward would include: - Support for software maintenance and playground infrastructure is needed after the lifetime of the project, for hosting and showcasing project outcome capabilities. - Software components and/or frameworks developed need to map to a common reference architecture that address - e.g.

It is vital that Europe develops more digital sovereignty in all major IT areas and open source should be a major component of this strategy. I would like to draw attention specifically to the importance of doing this for all major IT pillars that are in use in Europe. For example, I hear people speak often about the importance of digital sovereignty in the areas of cloud and chipsets.

Call for Evidence: Towards European Open Digital Ecosystems January 2026 Submitted by: [name removed], OpenLitterMap (UN Digital Public Good) & LitterWeek Cork, Ireland [email removed] PURPOSE This submission provides empirical evidence of structural failure in European innovation policy: the absence of mechanisms to identify, evaluate, and sustain citizen-originated open-source projects with demonstrated public…

SOLLOG is a French software development company since 2016. Our President, is an ex IBM development ingeneer. In 2025, we create a European Resource Planning consortium, with companies based in 4 countries in Europe and Based on open source language RUST. Please find the attached file.

As far as i have seen, the largest challenge is not the actual change in systems. There are more than enough open source systems, from operating system (linux) to hyperscalers (openstack) and software-defined storage (ceph) as well as many programs for end-users, libreoffice, etc., paperless office (paperless-ngx) and collaboration systems (nextcloud) and wiki's, and many many more ways, to be self-sufficient.

Given that all or almost all applications are based on a layer of persistence, I believe that facilitating the adoption of free software would be easier if there were economic incentives for companies to equip themselves at home with specific staff to manage databases. For example, a company purchasing an ERP system or even a small manager can often choose which database to use. How is the choice made?

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For me as an EU citizen, digital sovereignty is a key condition for securing European values, legal standards and economic stability in the long term. From a small business perspective, it is also an active risk minimisation tool. In the context of current geopolitical developments, this is not a theoretical or paranoid scenario, but a sober, strategic necessity.

Filed in German · English published by the European Commission

Free software has many advantages over proprietary software. The advantage most people tend to name first is that it's free (as in beer) and so total cost of ownership must be lower. To me two other advantages far outweigh anything else though: 1. It doesn't lock your data and investment in: most systems build up a silo of data of some sort that the user of the system works with.

Strengths in the EU: High level of expertise in niche areas – Public funding – Data protection (GDPR) Weaknesses in the EU and FOSS (e.g. Linux): Fragmentation: Too many small projects, no EU-wide standardisation – lack of Windows compatibility – hardware dependency: No EU alternatives to NVIDIA/Intel drivers or US chips – vulnerabilities: Even open-source projects such as Linux-Kernel are dominated by US firms…

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Our organisation tries to bridge the gap between the available open-source solutions and non-technical users that just need something that works reliably. We aim to do this in a fully transparent way with privacy and security in mind. While open-source software has in many cases become as good as or better than proprietary options, there is a barrier to adopting them for most citizens.

Our entire business is based on open-source software. We provide alternative solutions and platforms to our partners that are more cost effective, more transparent, and more flexible than the well known big-tech solutions. The EU can become and open-source powerhouse by promoting open-source through legislation, funding, and collaboration with developers to meet legal requirements.

The EU need for digital sovereignty is articulate and touches verticals and use cases that are pillars of governance and lifestyle in European area. From in-house payment processors, to proprietary AI models for our industries, from public knowledge bases for direct democracy, to bottom up social media and proprietary storage solutions.

In professional CAD workflows, the dominant DWG format is proprietary and non-ISO-standardised. This restricts interoperability between tools, limits reuse and development of European and open-source software, and creates long-term vendor lock-in.

As a small software business owner, I have first-hand experience with building open, and closed, source software in Europe and let me just tell you: it ain't easy. First, there's no easy way to deduce what iniatives the EU needs the most.

tichting Drupal Nederland represents a broad ecosystem of developers, service providers, public institutions and users working with the open source content management system Drupal. We welcome the European Commissions initiative on European Open Digital Ecosystems and would like to contribute from the perspective of long-term digital resilience.

This note builds on the experience of Software Heritage in archiving, identifying and preserving the global body of software, and on its collaborations with EU institutions and research projects. Policy recommendations: Use FLOSS to promote interoperability and government accountability; treat FLOSS as infrastructure for reproducible research; enforce data portability for software forges; promote responsible use of…

I am a co-founder of a video game company started in Belgium that uses open-source game engines instead of the paid game engines. We not only wanted to split less profit with the paid game engines (i.e. Unity & Unreal), but we wanted more reliability and less "what if the company gets sold" etc. We also didn't want to rely on paid American tech.

As an entrepreneur, CEO, Scientific Director and Research Officer and Developer: Open source should become an obligation in many critical areas, in particular orsquil being software and systems used by governments and public institutions.

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I'm a 39-year-old Software developer who has been thinking about an Open Source digital ecosystem and would like to share some conclusions. Current digital ecosystems are designed partly as app suites that work well together, partly to keep competition out. An Open ecosystem would be different, its main priority would be getting people in.

The European open-source sector has clear strengths. The EU hosts a wide range of open-source service providers covering various industries. The close connection between universities, research institutions, and projects fosters innovation, knowledge transfer, and talent development. International collaboration is established and common practice. However, structural weaknesses remain.

NGI has been extremely important to me in how I use digital infrastructure both professionally and privately. I am an political scientist working on the EU and judicial politics, and I have a strong interest in international justice as well as above average knowledge about technology.

FLOSS is the only way to further the official policy goals of the EU in fields like privacy, human rights, democracy protection, digital sovereignty. 1) The main strength of the FLOSS ecosystem in the EU is a strong foundation of passionate talent, supported by European education institutions and social welfare, united (by the Four Freedoms) in diversity.

The European Open Digital Ecosystem is central to strengthening the EUs technological sovereignty, security, and competitiveness. Open-source software and open digital assets enable transparency, interoperability, and innovation while reducing dependency on proprietary technologies. They are particularly important for SMEs, which often face resource constraints that limit access to advanced digital tools.

Open source has developed strongly in server environments: Linux runs + 96 % of the world’s servers. This movement must now apply to personal computers, which, on the one hand, cost us a fortune in obsolescence, private licences, dependence, personal and technical insecurity and, on the other hand, are a barrier to a change in mentality. This is a matter of urgency.

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Please see attached document. Below the executive summary. Executive Summary Europe has become a rule-maker in the digital domain, but much of the underlying infrastructure that executes those rules remains non-European and highly concentrated. This creates a practical sovereignty gap: policy ambition depends on systems Europe does not fully control.

The entire discussion about "business models" which will allow future welfare is missing in the paper and with this not only competitiveness or reliable generation responsibilities are not given. Further more the EU should take a different role in sense of keeping open rules vs. trying to determine what the can not deliver.

23 years ago, we began developing and using our own open-source operating system in order to break away from foreign companies and dependencies. As early as 2006, the Hungarian government's press office was already using our softwares for free. Also in several companies and schools, we replaced foreign commercial products that, in practice.

1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the EU open-source sector? The EU has always had a strong standing in OS among IT professionals. There exist vibrant communities who actively promote Open Source culture (Linux, Python). Many members see OS as a prerequisite to civil rigths and a supporting factor in a healthy democracy.

See attached document. Main points: Freedom of choice for computers and smartphones: ODR to be chosen and paid only after the purchase – NO bundling HW/SW in price – start with training – authorities/states to exploit synergies and enforce open formats as standard, no more quasi standards – security is more understandable in open source

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open source solutions have ALWAYS been a better choice than others. Compared to how much money is spent on licensing fees, you would have already been able to create your own fully working eco system, not relying on "global players" like AWS or Microsoft. Starting with support for open source operating systems, the whole administration could have custom WORKING systems based on their needs.

Using open source software is an excellent initiative. However, there are many pitfalls. The Linux family is very diverse. I believe that there should be a common standard and common rules applied so that software can be used and developed according to a single common standard. In addition, open source systems are often more expensive to maintain than other options.

My feedback does not contain anything ground breaking of "radical", and will not directly result in "open digital ecosystems", indirectly very much yes, and it is great start! In no particular order of importance, a random assortment of ideas: * Immediately stop any and all funding for the genAI / "blockchain" / "metaverse" hypes; * Enforce the GDPR, especially for US "big-tech"; * Enforce the DSA, especially for US…

Europe already has strong open-source communities and excellent technical talent, but too much value creation still happens outside the EU. The main bottleneck is not the lack of new inventions - it is the lack of scalable conditions for European start-ups and SMEs to build, maintain, secure, and commercialize open solutions that can be widely adopted in the public and private sector.

With Linux Europe has a powerful Alternative for the Desktop. There are however only rudimentary drafts for mobile environments. So for now nearly 100% of the population is stuck with iOS and Android. Those systems include Phones, TVs, Cars. Should they ever be turned against Europe everyone is instantly a spy. So Jolla/SailOs could be a starting point for an alternative mobile stack.

Support for developers and companies developing open source software would be great. Funding of open source projects is a big issue. If done correctly this could leverage an independent european IT market with a huge potential. For many things good software already exists. But switching from the Microsoft world to the Linux world is not an easy transition, espacially for smaller companies.

Since big American corporations have monopolised the digital space, free press has come under pressure. Political institutions are coming under pressure as well. The corporations' push for AI is bad for the environment, pushing up prices of RAM memory (which is bad for the PC and mobile market) and making totally fine products redundant.

Hello, I am a Dejà service provider, the important thing is communication. Europe, states, local and regional authorities... need to communicate that they use OpenSource tools, that they choose integrators that offer OpenSource. For sovereignty, the priority is, it seems to me, to have an interoperable European authentication solution (such as a google or a microsoft). This should be a mix of public and private.

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At the Alexandra Institute in Denmark, we both use and produce open source as an essential part of our IT and AI innovation efforts and services. Open source is also a strong motivator for our colleagues, helping us attract, develop, and retain some of the best IT and AI specialists. The opensource agenda aligns very well with EU sovereignty.

Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity to respond to this call. As headwAIGmbH, a developer of HeadwaiOne (an AI platform fully based on open source software), we see ourselves in a key position to target the procurement and market entry barriers described in the document for young companies. 1.

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Contribution to the Call for Evidence: European Open Digital Ecosystems I strongly support the objective of building European Open Digital Ecosystems as a foundation for digital sovereignty, resilience and long-term competitiveness. Reducing structural dependencies on non-European technology providers is essential.

As a software engineer and open source contributor working in the EU, consideration should be made to allow and protect contributions made to open source projects on personal time from employers who try to stifle personal contributions in employment contracts. I am a proponent of open source software (especially for interoperability purposes), and have published and contributed open source projects in the past.

Open software is the only viable basis for digital sovereignty. Any serious strategy for Europe’s technological independence must consider open software not as an option but as a binding standard. Proprietary software is structurally at odds with this objective. The key advantage of open software is its transparency.

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This is an experience report from a psychology professor working at a state financed university in germany. My main aim is to show that a transition by an average user to open source software is possible in a typical academic/administrational context that is currently still strongly rooted in proprietary software.

Context and ambition As an entrepreneur and investor, I propose an ambitious roadmap to quadruple in four years the Linux user base in Europe (from 16 to 64 millions), increase awareness of Free Software and structure a sustainable European ecosystem around Open Source. Indeed, the EU has many assets in Open Source: o Collaborative innovation (e.g.: KDE, Nextcloud, Blender, Mastodon).

I work as a senior IT executive in a critical infrastructure in Bavaria. Our systems must remain operational precisely when others fail. Yet today, operators of critical infrastructure are structurally and strategically dependent on non-European vendors primarily U.S. corporations.

As the founder of Agiledrop, a company that has built an international business serving clients like UNESCO, European Union institutions, Deutsche Telekom, T-Systems, and Capgemini entirely on open-source technologies, I welcome this initiative and offer the following feedback.

With our product Sequoia PGP we provide security critical infrastructure latest since Redhat and Debian both decided to base their package signatures on our software. I would never trust security relevant software where I cannot check the source code. As provider of Free Software under GNU licenses we understand that making business and providing Free Software does not contradict each other.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the open source sector? The strengths of Open Source are reflected in its sustainability. Code is not improved by “reinvent the wheel” but by learning from each other. In addition, the same nature ensures reusability, cooperation and affordability of open source solutions. Participants of the PLEIO platform shall jointly bear the costs of further development.

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Tomorrow all Europe may go dark if the 3 major cloud providers gets an order from Trump to cut our services. Even if a core national service is self-hosted, it certainly has to communicate with external services to work efficiently. So a domino effect will knock down everythingin this case.

Europe needs to invest in bringing together fundamental software solutions that can bring intrinsic security, protection of data ownership, and tool and infrastructure independence. Crucial for reaching these goals is coordination and legislation to enforce generic compatibility and interchangeability and to ban tool and vendor lock-in.

A critical gap in the proposal is the absence of any explicit recognition of steward-owned business models as a governance and ownership solution for the open digital ecosystems the EU seeks to build. The document correctly identifies structural problemsvalue extraction by non-EU actors, fragile governance of open-source projects, difficulties in scaling without capture, and the need for sustainable, mission-aligned…

Open source servers are already widely used. Action is needed to decouple PCs from Microsoft’s monopoly and in the cloud world from US big applications in M365, Gsuite etc. It would be possible to start with the public sector, obliging developers to create web applications, i.e. multi-platform applications, and starting to install Linux on public administration websites.

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CONTRIBUTION TO EU OPEN DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS INITIATIVE THE FALSE CHOICE Europe faces a strategic choiceexcept it's not really a choice: **Option A**: Recreate entire US software stacks as proprietary European alternatives. Rebuild iOS, Android, cloud, AI, developer tools from scratch. Cost: hundreds of billions. Timeline: decades. Success probability: near zero.

Why nobody orders us when we deliver 100 % LIBRES solutions? Free-Solutions Sàrl is the only IT company without any proprietary software or GAFAM services used for 20 years. It has been offering 100 % LIBRES Chat and Visiconferencing systems since 2014 alternatives to Whatsapp and Teams and based on openfire igniterealtime.org It also offers free and controlled high-performance AI servers without any possible data…

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An interesting domain where there is almost no open-source alternatives: legacy systems. Typical legacy systems are the COBOL infrastructures, that most big corporations in Europe have, they are critical to their business (usually, the financial part of the company), but they never talk about them publicly (maybe ashamed of using COBOL in 2025 ?).

I have been campaigning for the use of open source software for a long time. In my view, this is the only solution to ensure users’ freedom of choice by refusing receiving strategies, complying with standards, preserving personal data and many other things, including, of course, sovereignty.

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I'm VP of Community at Zig Software Foundation (ZSF from now on), an American non-profit foundation (501c3, EIN 84-5105214) dedicated to developing Zig, an open source programming language. ZSF lives entirely off donations (see 2025 financials https://ziglang.org/news/2025-financials/ ), has been operating for about 8 year now and we're starting to see mainstream adoption of the language by tech companies all over…

Yes, I support better EU approach to opensource and developer support. Opensource is largest software asset globally and is absolute necessary for digital businesses. For individuals, it is the only real way to any digital rights which EU guarantees on paper and to allow the democratic decisions of citizens.

I've been involved in FLOSS for almost 10 years (short compared to some) but i fully supporta nd am encouraged by investment and dedication to digital sovereignty and divesting from surveillance capitalistic technology and adding to the free and open source options for governments, organisations and individuals.

1) (i) Knowledge and fear of "ownership" in that open source solutions requires system administrators that can ensure quality, security, and packaging of solutions, and this is costly process that should have been done by the community in a way similar to the packaging of the various Linux distributions now sponsored by big companies. (ii) Programmers need payments and good open source solutions are not free.

A European open source policy should not only encourage the use of open source software, but should fully recognise the notion of digital commons (resource + community + governance). This gives it political, social and economic strength, beyond software lingenerie.

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For years, and not for so long, we have been working on proprietary interfaces that do not even belong to Europe. We should be assured of the impenetrability of what we do, the contract of trust is a contract for a business where the company contracts much more than the individual. Moving to open source is not just a necessity but an obligation.

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Europe's open-source sector is a strategic asset for digital sovereignty and cybersecurity, but it remains under-leveraged due to structural market failures and policy gaps. It combines strong communities and technical capabilities.

I am a network and system administrator, I am for the promotion of OpenSource software but even more for independence from foreign solutions and particularly GAFAMs which circumvent European laws (GDPR, etc.). And who can, if they wish, cut critical infrastructure as they see fit (e.g. CPI mailbox).

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We have the best engineers in Europe in the world, which have led to 2 huge techno-industrial revolutions over the past 40 years: the Web and Generative Artificial Intelligence! However, most of these talented engineers do not pursue their careers in Europe, as they do not find structures that match their talent and ambitions.

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The European Commissions decision to launch a public consultation on an EU-wide open source digital ecosystems strategy is a highly valuable and timely initiative. Open source software forms the backbone of todays digital economy, yet Europe has long lacked a coordinated approach capable of fully capturing the value created by its vibrant communities, researchers, and companies.

Filed in Italian · English published by the European Commission

In order to maintain our digital sovereignty vis-à-vis the other major powers, it is essential that the EU finally wake up, the United States has never been our allies, and even less so since recent events, there is a multitude of open source equivalence for almost all proprietary services. We must be independent of the GAFAM, which is increasingly playing it in Mode 1984 with our data.

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The European Union is at a defining moment in its technological history. To guarantee its digital sovereignty, the protection of its citizens’ data and its strategic security, Europe must make open-source artificial intelligence a central pillar of its industrial and scientific policy. First of all, lopen-source is a fundamental lever of sovereignty.

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It is essential to oblige European and Member State administrations to use free logics to 1/s ensure better control of our 2/susciter data an ecosystem and virtuous dynamic driven by European 3/se actors to protect against foreign interference in our European and national affairs.

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I am the author of The Ethical Resolution Method (ERM): A Procedural Framework for Evaluating and Stabilizing Moral Norms in Sociotechnical and AI Systems I know the EU is looking for open source, soverign systems that solve the problem of AI alignment and I just happen to have authored one. My CV is in your system EX2026D1335528 if anyone would like to reach out.

We view the work of NLnet Foundation as absolutely critical for the EU digital sovereignty. Without the Foundation support, we would not have been in the position to form a technology startup in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, through which the young and talented engineers get to work on the top-notch FPGA projects, developing applications for Cryptography, DSP, AI, RISC-V Embedded, using High Level Synthesis and…

As an entrepreneur of an european opensource solution competing with Microsoft on large accounts I would like to see the European Commission must less dependant to Microsoft and AWS. Recent study (Astères 2025) shows that for 15% of digital products/services bought in the US it is more than 400.000 jobs lost in Europe.

There is a momentum where Microsoft and Google can be replaced easily: -There is a fatigue of Microsoft among IT departments and they are looking for alternatives. Could be open source ones. -Mobile-Only can be a great replacement for Windows with Open Source Android or Ubuntu Touch. We can see euro people and organizations working with a single device by adopting this disruptive vision of IT, but EU needs to lead.

To protect the economic interests of society as a whole while also contributing to the most rapid technical innovation the EU should require open source tech development for all EU funded research and demand purchasing preferences for open source software and hardware products. This will save money and result in an enormous return on investment.

Please, consider the work that you can find in the Publication Office of the European Union (2021): Levi, Simona et al. - Proposal for a Sovereign and Democratic Digitalisation of Europe https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/dae77969-7812-11ec-9136-01aa75ed71a1 In particular chapter 7: 7. Sustainability of sovereign and democratic digitalisation.

Hello, I put myself on the cybersecurity front to address the topic of open digital and we do not go too far, as the Thales group migrated the whole of its IT park under pressure in 48 hours in June 2025. Advantages of sovereignty, control and confidentiality of data and connections.

Filed in French · English published by the European Commission

he US muscled the EU into adopting Article 6 of the EU Copyright Directive, preventing reverse engineering in return for free trade. By implementing tariffs, the US broke that agreement. Theres no reason not to delete Article 6 of the EUCD, and all the other laws that prevent European companies from jailbreaking iPhones and making their own App Stores (minus Apples 30% commission), as well as ad-blockers for…

Opensource software and operating system are really better overally. In my opinion schools, public institutions MUST use ONLY opensource software, with enormous advantages in financial saving, distributed Cognition, technological upgrade. It’s time to detach Italy and Europe from proprietary sofware.

Filed in Italian · English published by the European Commission

Open Source Software is the often unacknowledged foundation upon which most of our computing capability is built. EU citizens unknowingly interact with OSS through almost every electronic action they partake in, because almost all commercial software involves the usage of OSS.

It's no secret that the US projects geopolitical soft power through its proprietary, particularly SaaS, software solutions. In the event of (for example) an international incident over Greenland, it is conceivable that the US President could issue a national security directive ordering all American tech companies to immediately cease serving customers based in the EU.

It should be mandatory for all EU countries, due to sovereignty concerns, to either use local (European-made and owned) proprietary Operating Systems, or, ideally, Free and Open-Source ones. You cannot start thinking about sovereignty and freedom without the base software being something you can inspect and/or control.

[ Barriers that hamper adoption ] Throughout our educational system, it is taught that there is basically one kind of computer, and that computer runs Windows. Unless youth is particularly curious, or happen to go into IT, they will never know about open source software in general, and Linux specifically.

Hello, whatever the softwares or OS OpenSource chosen, people simply do not subscribe to them because their computer beginnings have been flooded by Microsoft, Google or Meta. Should we not start by directing schools towards the free world: LibreOffice suite, Thunderbird, Gimp, OS Linux, Octave and more. In addition, a few European initiatives appear, such as Vivaldi, Qwant/Ecosia, Nextcloud/OwnCloud.

Filed in French · English published by the European Commission

One of the strongest data sovereignty solutions that should be adopted across the EU is, without a doubt, Mautic - the open-source alternative to US-based email marketing and automation platforms such as Mailchimp, HubSpot and many others. Mautic offers a fundamentally different security model.

This comment is from a full service open source solution provider. We see three major pillars to boost digital sovereignty in the EU: 1. Tenders should give additional points for open source solutions. 2. Organizations or companies that use open source solutions should have a simple way to pay the maintainers or contributors or a partner offering a service level agreement. 3.

The EU in the past initiated multiple instruments (cf. Gaia-X, IPCEI-CIS, ...), many EU countries invest into local digital sovereignty initiatives, somewhat not coordinated EU-wide yet (cf. numerique.gouv.fr, zendis.de and many more).

This is a great initiative and would have wide ranging benefits (including to big tech). Having worked in the FOSS community for many years, I believe it's still very poorly understood by most (including the tech community). As articulated much better than I could in the book by Jim Whitehurst, The Open Organization.

The EU's priority should be to support the maintenance of existing projects without imposing excessive constraints. Experience shows that bureaucratic barriers and reporting requirements can discourage independent developers, while direct and targeted funding, based on the actual use of projects, would ensure greater stability and continuity.

Open-source software is typically far less resource-intensive than commercial, closed software, resulting in a significantly smaller environmental footprint. A compelling example is the Linux operating system, which runs perfectly well on older hardware that can no longer run Windows reliably.

Practical experience with open source in an SME context I make extensive use of open-source software in a commercial setting, primarily for running an online webshop and related data analysis. My experience is that open source is not an ideological alternative, but a key economic enabler that allows small and medium-sized enterprises to remain competitive. 1.

I have become increasingly concerned about our business's dependency on American digital infrastructure. Recent geopolitical developments have shown that the United States can no longer be assumed to be a reliable partner. This matters to my business because core servicesemail, collaboration tools, paymentsare essential.

Supernova Labs and The Open Spaceplane Project exemplify how open design, FabLab/Hackspace culture, and publicly shared knowledge accelerate innovation, lower barriers to entry, and strengthen European technological sovereignty. Supernova Labs grew within makerspace environments, developing rapid prototyping and systems integration in 3D printing, drones, and aerospace workflows.

We have been using open source software in our company for many years. Private as well. These include Linux, FreeBSD, LibreOffice, Kolab, Apache and many other programmes. This has saved us a lot of costs over the years. Independence and data protection are also not to be underestimated. Unfortunately, we also need to use Windows for certain programmes.

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ad 1.i: A major barrier for adoption is the lack of access to mobile platforms (on Apple because the DMA ruling had loopholes they exploit to frustrate the ruling's intention; upcoming on Google because they see Apple get away with it).

1) strengths/weaknesses of the EU open-source sector + barriers Open source is a strategic tool for the EU to strengthen transparency, auditability and joint knowledge building. By being able to inspect and contribute, European technical expertise grows structurally, bringing direct economic benefits.

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As an academic, it seems to me that the support mechanisms for initiatives in the field of free or open-source software are not sufficient and that this creates difficulties in bringing about innovative and promising projects. For example, in my University of Technology, we are developing two open-source software packages. The first is a software to help with problem solving and feedback.

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We are a hosting, datacenter and IT solutions provider, based in Germany. We're using a LOT of open source software; our security -- and that of our customers! -- depends on that software being maintained and enhanced in a timely, reliable and sustainable manner.

The initiative rightly frames open digital ecosystems as a pillar for EU tech sovereignty and resilience, and it explicitly calls for foundations that are open, interoperable and verifiable. However, the current outline remains largely strategic and does not yet specify the interoperability deliverables needed to make interoperability-by-design operational.

# In response to Question 1 (barriers to adoption and contribution): ## Using Open Source A major practical barrier: we cannot buy infrastructure "just in case", so there is nowhere to run FOSS without lengthy procurement. A lot of open source registered in government OSPOs (when they exist at all) is actually packaged in commercial products, which solves the practical problems but defeats the purpose.

We need our own European Open Source AI definition (China and US already have one) In Europe, everyone developing and deploying open-source generative AI systems must navigate two challenges: some of the strictest personal data protection laws (in the form of the GDPR or its derivatives in the UK and Switzerland) and unclear regulation regarding open-source AI systems (e.g., underspecified use of the term…

1. Strengths, weaknesses, and barriers The foundation of the EU open-source sector is strong. Europe benefits from a well-educated population, strong technical universities, and long-standing community traditions that encourage collaboration and contribution to open-source projects.

I believe in a stronger, more cohesive Europe. I firmly believe that we cannot create that if we are forced to use technology develeped and controlled by foreign oligarchs. We cannot be sure of the security, whether our systems are compromised, or who has access to them. I believe that locally developed, opensource solutions are the best alternative. We can create systems and crucially retain sole control over them.

1. Open Source competence, activity and use in the EU is strong. Many of the world's finest, oldest and most critical infrastructure Open Source projects have European citizens in leading roles. Europeans have been involved and have been driving Open Source since long before even the name Open Source was established.

Icecat is a listed SME (ISIN: NL0012291266) headquartered in Amsterdam and operates at the intersection of open product data, global e-commerce integrations, and deep-tech investments. Icecats experience is grounded in the practical use of open source and open data as drivers of European digital sovereignty and wealth.

About OpenNovations: We deliver advanced data management and analytics for highly regulated environments with strict requirements on integrity, cybersecurity and transparency. We build on open standards and routinely operationalise open-source components under compliance, assurance and audit constraints. 1.

𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗱 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆 (𝗣𝗗𝗙) 𝗮𝗱𝗱𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗗𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀. While most contributions understandably focus on open-source licensing, funding, or vendor lock-in, this submission highlights a missing layer: operational authority, accountability, and enforceable governance within open digital ecosystems.

Dear EC, I am one of the leaders for a large and venerable open source project called Inkscape and I wish to share with you the experience of running an organisation that has contributors from the EU and the rest of the world. The Inkscape project founded in 2003 is a vector image editor useful for making designs, logos, pdfs, prints and other useful made materials.

In my work on digital services for government I have seen open source work effectively save costs (because reuse is enabled, both by the license and by the fact that source code is openly available), save time (because departments can suddenly work together better when they do it in an open space), work against vendor lockin (more vendors can apply) and improve security (because researchers can easily verify).

medienhaus/ is a digital infrastructure collective at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin) that develops and operates selfhosted, free and opensource services for teaching, collaboration and public engagement.

1. Strengths, weaknesses and barriers of the EU open-source sector The EU open-source sector benefits from a diverse community of developers, SMEs, research organisations and public administrations, aligned with European values such as openness, interoperability and digital rights. Open source underpins Europes digital infrastructure.

I have written extensively about the extractive status quo of open source development and what to do about it here: https://blog.muni.town/open-source-power/ https://blog.muni.town/company-as-commons/ Happy to engage in further conversations about this.

1. Strengths, Weaknesses, and Barriers Strengths: Growing political support for digital sovereignty, vibrant startup ecosystem, "Public Money, Public Code" initiatives, and recognition of open source as strategic asset. Weaknesses: Uneven adoption maturity, lack of corporate investment in open-source projects, deficit of qualified professionals, and governance of key projects outside the EU.

Open source can play a key role as a foundational and interoperability layer, provided it is complemented by clear governance, sustainable maintenance models, and accountable industrial actors. For critical and long-lived infrastructures, openness should enhance resilience and choice, not replace responsibility, liability, and lifecycle guarantees.