Our Network Contribution to Shape the European Open Digital Ecosystem Strategy

This document presents the joint response of Open Knowledge Sweden, Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Knowledge Finland, and Open Knowledge Estonia to the Call for Evidence on “The European Open Digital Ecosystem Strategy”.

Executive Summary

Drawing on two decades of experience in building and supporting open digital infrastructure, we provide observations and recommendations to advance the EU’s strategic approach to open source, emphasizing its role in enhancing technological sovereignty, security, competitiveness, and the Commission’s internal use of open digital assets, building on the 2020-2023 Open Source Software Strategy.

The EU open-source sector boasts significant strengths, including one of the world’s largest developer communities (nearly 25 million EU-based contributors generating over 155 million annual contributions), alignment with EU principles like transparency and GDPR compliance, and contributions to 70-90% of global software codebases. Successes such as FIWARE, RISC-V, and Simpl demonstrate innovation in AI, cloud, and data spaces, contributing €65-95 billion to EU GDP. However, weaknesses include uneven organizational maturity (only 34% have formal strategies; 22% have OSPOs), value exploitation by non-EU entities, and barriers like vendor lock-in, underfunding for maintenance, legal concerns, and skill gaps, which hinder adoption, contributions, and scaling.

Open source adds substantial value to public and private sectors by enabling sovereignty, cost savings, reduced lock-in, enhanced security, and innovation. Public examples include France’s Nextcloud deployments and Estonia’s X-Road for efficient, resilient e-services; private benefits encompass productivity gains (63% of organizations) and competitiveness in telecom and automotive. Key factors: TCO reduction, transparency, and collaborative ecosystems.

To support growth, we recommend dedicated funding (e.g., €1-2 billion via Digital Europe Programme), “open by default” procurement with EU-owned company preferences (EuroStack), sovereign infrastructure (e.g., expanding Codeberg/Gaia-X), public-private partnerships, cybersecurity mandates, and capacity building. Prioritize technology areas like open AI, cloud/edge, cybersecurity tools, RISC-V hardware, and IoT/industrial applications due to high dependencies and sovereignty risks. Amplify OSS in sectors such as public administration, healthcare, automotive, energy, and finance/telecom to boost competitiveness and resilience.

These measures will unlock open source’s potential, reducing external dependencies, fostering innovation, and positioning the EU as a global leader in resilient digital ecosystems. We urge swift implementation through pilots and monitoring to achieve quick wins.

Recommendations

• Prioritize EU-based and EEA/EU-owned companies building on open source software and providing their solutions as open source in public procurements. See the industry initiative EuroStack.eu. Make this a priority in the revised EU’s public procurement directive.
• Establish a dedicated EU funding programme for the long-term maintenance, security, and governance of critical open digital infrastructure and digital public goods.
• Establish a dedicated EU funding programme to fund research focused on the economic, social and security impact of open technologies powering the open digital ecosystem. 
• Promote and create EU-wide platforms for the secure exchange of code, tools and expertise across open source technical teams, to avoid centralisation in commercial infrastructures vulnerable to being affected by a kill switch. 
• Create multi-year operational funding instruments for open-source foundations and civic organisations that steward widely used public-interest technologies. Together with it, allocate resources for them to benefit from the emergent public AI infrastructure, including the AI factories.
• Integrate open-source and open-licensing requirements as mandatory into EU-funded digital projects, including digital literacy, public infrastructure, social protection, emergency management and development cooperation as well as all technical assistance programmes. This will enable South – South exchanges, increase the ability to solve problems at scale and optimise the resources. 
• Launch joint EU–partner country initiatives with regions such as India and Mercosur, focused on the co-development and shared governance of open technologies, the exchange of local capacities, as well as the distribution of the maintenance and innovation of open digital public goods.
• Align public procurement, funding, and policy instruments to incentivise the adoption of open technologies and contribute back to upstream projects.
• Support shared services, hosting, and support infrastructures to enable public administrations to adopt open-source solutions at scale. This is particularly relevant for municipalities and decentralised entities. 
• Strengthen coordination between digital policy, trade, and international partnership instruments to ensure coherence between internal EU objectives and external action.
• Launch initiatives that invite young people to contribute to the development, maintenance, and improvement of this ecosystem.

Link to source at the European Commission website ↗