European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Ideology: Is Open Source “Communism”?

  • Long subthread debates whether open source resembles communism, socialism, libertarianism, or is politically neutral.
  • Critics call “open source = communism” reductive: projects are privately owned via copyright and licenses; there’s no single state owner or planned monoculture.
  • Some argue source code is part of the “means of production” for tech workers so there is a socialist flavor, but others insist open source is better seen as decentralization and market-enabling.
  • Several comments note that political labels are routinely abused to smear policies and that language has drifted, especially in US-centric debates.

EU Digital Sovereignty vs. US Tech Dependence

  • Broad agreement that the EU is dangerously dependent on US platforms (Microsoft 365, clouds, mobile OSes, databases).
  • Sanctions and recent US political instability are cited as concrete risks: critical institutions could lose access or face backdoored systems.
  • Some see open source as a key tool but stress it’s not enough: real sovereignty also needs EU-based hosting, maintenance, and even hardware (e.g., CPUs).

Open Source vs. Building a Competitive EU Software Industry

  • One camp: Europe doesn’t just need more OSS, it needs strong local vendors; blindly preferring OSS could undercut viable European proprietary businesses.
  • Another camp: anything funded with public money should be open source; governments should demand “public money, public code” and use OSS to avoid lock-in and vendor capture.
  • A hybrid model is proposed: public, open reference implementations and standards; private firms compete on top.

Funding, Grants, and Sustainability

  • EU already funds many FOSS projects (e.g., NGI, NLnet, Forgejo, code forges), but typical grants (5k–50k EUR) are criticized as too small to build serious alternatives to US clouds, databases, or AI.
  • Dispute over developer motivation: some say experts will work for modest pay if the work matters; others argue that without serious money Europe will keep losing top talent and never reach scale.

Procurement, Governance, and Past Migrations

  • Many stress the real lever is procurement: stop defaulting to “nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft/IBM/Oracle.”
  • Examples: Munich’s LiMux (technically successful but politically reversed), Schleswig-Holstein’s migration, Polish and Dutch digital government platforms.
  • Open standards for data exchange are seen as at least as important as open code.
  • Fears: EU might create bureaucrat-controlled “EU Linux” forks or overregulated “EUbuntu” instead of contributing to existing ecosystems.

Sovereign OSS Ecosystem and Infrastructure

  • Proposals include: EU-hosted forges (Codeberg, Forgejo, Sourcehut), a “European Open Source Sovereignty Fund,” and pan‑European reference stacks (OS, office, email, browser, accounting).
  • Some advocate EU-picked “baseline” OSS infrastructure (cheap to fund, fast to ship) plus enforced open standards to prevent new walled gardens.
  • Others warn that tightly coupling EU money and blessing to specific projects could distort the open market nature of OSS.

Views on the Call for Evidence and EU Regulation

  • Mixed reactions: some praise the Commission for asking the community; others see it as evidence they “don’t understand” OSS or just want it cheaper.
  • Broader argument over whether EU bureaucracy and heavy regulation, not lack of OSS, are what hold back a thriving software industry and drive startups and talent to the US.