8 ms·

I agree with others here that focusing your eyes on _using_ open source is, at least, an incomplete view of the problem. What we (European software engineers)

I agree with others here that focusing your eyes on _using_ open source is, at least, an incomplete view of the problem. What we (European software engineers) have been arguing, is that software that is funded by public means, such as from universities or institutions, ought to be made fully public, including ability to tweak. Thinking that open source software will help solve your budget and/or political problem is not something we're interested in doing for free. This excerpt here: > In the last few years, it has been widely acknowledged that open source – which is a public good to be freely used, modified, and redistributed – has suggests they see it as free candy, rather than the result of love and hard work, provided for free because it's nice. Pay for what you use, especially at the government level. Of course, I strongly encourage the European governments to invest in open source. And if you're interested in giving money, I'm interested in doing work. Same as ever.

brodouevencode 9mo ago
The early mantras of OSS included "free as in speech" and "free as in beer".
- mghackerlady 9mo ago
  Those were mantras of the Free Software movement. The open source movement (despite creating a lot of free software) was never about the moral stance of software freedom, but the practical benefits
fsflover 9mo ago
> software that is funded by public means, such as from universities or institutions, ought to be made fully public, including ability to tweak Anyone who agrees with this should sign this petition made by Free Software Foundation Europe: https://publiccode.eu https://publiccode.eu
- Roark66 9mo ago
  While I agree with the sentiment I'm not sure this is actually viable. For example here in Poland the previous govt invested in huge amount of software for digital govt services. From company formation, social insurance/heathcare (things like electronic prescriptions and patient data) to tax submission at all levels. All of this is implemented using publicly documented open standards so anyone can write a client for these services, or anyone can use official Web clients, but none of the code is open source. This is in contrast to previous governments that tried to implement all of this using proprietary standards where the companies hired were paid billions to deliver a system and they ended up owning the data exchange protocol and a client they distributed in binary only form. And they also profited from commercial software that implemented their proprietary protocols. That worked (for the company hired)for taxes and they made billions. But for other stuff like medical, when they had no way to sell their proprietary standards they wasted billions and years of time and delivered nothing. Then subsequent govt threw the entire project out and built it on open standards. So based on this experience I think using well documented open data exchange standards is much more important than software itself being open source. Who cares the server side software is open source if you still can't submit your taxes with your own python script?
  - embedding-shape 9mo ago
    So your argument here is that while the software can be open source, it matters less, if whatever the software does isn't actually an open standard? Wouldn't "being open source with own custom protocol" essentially be as open as "open source or not, but software implements open standards" anyways?
    - tyre 9mo ago
      Especially for the use case they’re talking about. It makes sense to have open standards for something like filing taxes so many companies can compete. Having source code for the tax system itself is interesting, but I think the market for “run software for processing incoming taxes for polish citizens” is exactly one. Unless they expect pull requests, which could be fun, but as OSS maintainers know, it’s a ton of work and boy would there be a ton of spam on something like this.
JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
> software that is funded by public means What fraction of global software spending does the EU command? I love the vision. I'm just sceptical of how seriously it's being pursued if it's another Brussels project without resource commitments.
kubb 9mo ago
I wonder if this is useful feedback to give? It would probably need to be more actionable. I’m hopeful the European open source community will take this invitation seriously.
tgv 9mo ago
> software that is funded by public means, such as from universities or institutions I think that might be the wrong approach, at least in this day and age. The spirit is good, but that software has cost good money to produce, and universities are dependent on external revenue. It's not unreasonable to charge for the things they produce. Also, should e.g. an American company have access to software produced by an Italian university?
- integralid 9mo ago
  >The spirit is good, but that software has cost good money to produce, and universities are dependent on external revenue Obviously, but most of university research - at least in Europe - is funded by public money. The idea is that research funded by public money should be public by default, unless there's a reason to do otherwise. >Also, should e.g. an American company have access to software produced by an Italian university? Yes, of course.
  - tgv 9mo ago
    Yet it's not American "public" money that funded it. And it's good to realize what 'public' means in this case: paid for by the general public. What companies produce is also (often) paid for by them, only not via taxes but through purchases, subscriptions, etc. Why should the software produced by companies be exempt?
    - CrimsonRain 9mo ago
      American public money funded most of the tech that the whole Europe is depending on and extracting trillions of dollars value. Your American using Italian uni stuff is nonsense.
      - tgv 9mo ago
        So the argument is basically: because taxes, and only taxes, paid for something somewhere, it should be free for everybody everywhere? Ah wait, you're somebody else. Why the somewhat unhinged attack on Europe? Because Europe is getting US tech for free?
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
jagged-chisel 9mo ago
> … public good to be freely used, modified, and redistributed That doesn’t mean “free as in beer,” but “free as in speech.” I do understand the potential for misinterpretation, but one could easily add “after paying for it” and those freedoms don’t change.
- seydor 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - mort96 9mo ago
    Neither beer nor speech were the topics of discussion. "Free as in speech rather than free as in beer" is an analogy commonly used to specify that you're talking about freedom rather than money.
    - swiftcoder 9mo ago
      Being the only Romance language that doesn't have separate words for "libre" and "gratis" (liberté and gratuit, etc), has its downsides
      - tbrownaw 9mo ago
        > only Romance language ...But we're (mostly) not one?
        swiftcoder 9mo ago
        I mean, yes and no? In common speech we certainly lean more on Germanic vocabulary (and grammar!), but the dictionary overall has a lot more French/Latin-derived vocabulary than it does Germanic - many of them overly formal/technical for daily speech (Entertainingly, modern German also adopted the Latin-rooted "gratis")
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
lynx97 9mo ago
The EU definitely has no concept of "love". It was founded to make trade easier. All the fuzz about humane values and morals has been tacked on more or less recently, to keep up the support for it from the population. It is the literal wolf in sheep's clothing.
- waldarbeiter 9mo ago
  What does "wolf in sheep's clothing" mean for you, concretely, outside of metaphors?
  - odiroot 9mo ago
    Chat control and the never-ending drive to police our private communications.
    - Y-bar 9mo ago
      What exactly makes you assume that the persons arguing for open source here are not the same people who has helped us defeat earlier attempts to make chat control happen?
  - lynx97 9mo ago
    Well, the EU is pretty firmly in conservative hands. Ask a random EU citizen if they know that EPP is secretly leading the EU since its conception? They will likely not realize, because they fall for the piece&love propaganda. Just look at what VDL has done since she overtook the lead? Know where she comes from? Used to be defense minister in germany. Was called "Flintenuschi" back then. And now, magically, we are supposed to invest a shitload of money into military. Thats what I call a wolf in sheep's clothing.
- yohannparis 9mo ago
  The US was founded to not pay taxes... Come on, you know well that most things evolve and grow.
- jansper39 9mo ago
jokethrowaway 9mo ago
So, as open source developers building a public good, where is our share of EU taxes?
- hartator 9mo ago
  Do you mean paying EU taxes for doing open-source? :)
elric 9mo ago
Many projects made with government money are developed under the EUPL. Including some of the ones I've worked on. Oddly enough, they aren't available for download anywhere.
- nandomrumber 9mo ago
  There is some EUPL software available here: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/ https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/
  - sam_lowry_ 9mo ago
    Where exactly? I really see nothing that qualifies as open source there. Just text.
    - bathtub365 9mo ago
      Here is the actual catalogue https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/eu-oss-catalogue https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/eu-oss-catalogue
    - joostdecock 9mo ago
      There's also this GitLab instance: https://code.europa.eu/ https://code.europa.eu/
lifetimerubyist 9mo ago
Very few people truely understand the concept of Liberty.
cindyllm 9mo ago
[dead]
troyvit 9mo ago
Just to second what you are saying, over 2025 we saw some cases where small open source projects that underpin massive infrastructure are struggling for funding, and they don't even need that much! To me this is a place where the EU can spend a few dollars and have a massive influence on the sustainability and direction of open source projects.
pphysch 9mo ago
European software industry is so interesting because my impression is that the (Western) OSS sector is largely supported by talented European developers. Just a vibe from interacting with hundreds of successful OSS projects. Europe clearly has endemic talent, and I'm not even sure it's a funding problem rather than an organizational/leadership one. They could throw money at developers who already have decent if humble QoL, or they could bring them together to build large systems that can compete with American big tech.
pabs3 9mo ago
FSFE campaign for that: https://publiccode.eu/ https://publiccode.eu/

brodouevencode 9mo ago

The early mantras of OSS included "free as in speech" and "free as in beer".

mghackerlady 9mo ago
Those were mantras of the Free Software movement. The open source movement (despite creating a lot of free software) was never about the moral stance of software freedom, but the practical benefits

fsflover 9mo ago

> software that is funded by public means, such as from universities or institutions, ought to be made fully public, including ability to tweak Anyone who agrees with this should sign this petition made by Free Software Foundation Europe: https://publiccode.eu https://publiccode.eu

Roark66 9mo ago
While I agree with the sentiment I'm not sure this is actually viable. For example here in Poland the previous govt invested in huge amount of software for digital govt services. From company formation, social insurance/heathcare (things like electronic prescriptions and patient data) to tax submission at all levels. All of this is implemented using publicly documented open standards so anyone can write a client for these services, or anyone can use official Web clients, but none of the code is open source. This is in contrast to previous governments that tried to implement all of this using proprietary standards where the companies hired were paid billions to deliver a system and they ended up owning the data exchange protocol and a client they distributed in binary only form. And they also profited from commercial software that implemented their proprietary protocols. That worked (for the company hired)for taxes and they made billions. But for other stuff like medical, when they had no way to sell their proprietary standards they wasted billions and years of time and delivered nothing. Then subsequent govt threw the entire project out and built it on open standards. So based on this experience I think using well documented open data exchange standards is much more important than software itself being open source. Who cares the server side software is open source if you still can't submit your taxes with your own python script?
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  So your argument here is that while the software can be open source, it matters less, if whatever the software does isn't actually an open standard? Wouldn't "being open source with own custom protocol" essentially be as open as "open source or not, but software implements open standards" anyways?
  - tyre 9mo ago
    Especially for the use case they’re talking about. It makes sense to have open standards for something like filing taxes so many companies can compete. Having source code for the tax system itself is interesting, but I think the market for “run software for processing incoming taxes for polish citizens” is exactly one. Unless they expect pull requests, which could be fun, but as OSS maintainers know, it’s a ton of work and boy would there be a ton of spam on something like this.

JumpCrisscross 9mo ago

> software that is funded by public means What fraction of global software spending does the EU command? I love the vision. I'm just sceptical of how seriously it's being pursued if it's another Brussels project without resource commitments.

kubb 9mo ago

I wonder if this is useful feedback to give? It would probably need to be more actionable. I’m hopeful the European open source community will take this invitation seriously.

tgv 9mo ago

> software that is funded by public means, such as from universities or institutions I think that might be the wrong approach, at least in this day and age. The spirit is good, but that software has cost good money to produce, and universities are dependent on external revenue. It's not unreasonable to charge for the things they produce. Also, should e.g. an American company have access to software produced by an Italian university?

integralid 9mo ago
>The spirit is good, but that software has cost good money to produce, and universities are dependent on external revenue Obviously, but most of university research - at least in Europe - is funded by public money. The idea is that research funded by public money should be public by default, unless there's a reason to do otherwise. >Also, should e.g. an American company have access to software produced by an Italian university? Yes, of course.
- tgv 9mo ago
  Yet it's not American "public" money that funded it. And it's good to realize what 'public' means in this case: paid for by the general public. What companies produce is also (often) paid for by them, only not via taxes but through purchases, subscriptions, etc. Why should the software produced by companies be exempt?
  - CrimsonRain 9mo ago
    American public money funded most of the tech that the whole Europe is depending on and extracting trillions of dollars value. Your American using Italian uni stuff is nonsense.
    - tgv 9mo ago
      So the argument is basically: because taxes, and only taxes, paid for something somewhere, it should be free for everybody everywhere? Ah wait, you're somebody else. Why the somewhat unhinged attack on Europe? Because Europe is getting US tech for free?

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

jagged-chisel 9mo ago

> … public good to be freely used, modified, and redistributed That doesn’t mean “free as in beer,” but “free as in speech.” I do understand the potential for misinterpretation, but one could easily add “after paying for it” and those freedoms don’t change.

seydor 9mo ago
[flagged]
- mort96 9mo ago
  Neither beer nor speech were the topics of discussion. "Free as in speech rather than free as in beer" is an analogy commonly used to specify that you're talking about freedom rather than money.
  - swiftcoder 9mo ago
    Being the only Romance language that doesn't have separate words for "libre" and "gratis" (liberté and gratuit, etc), has its downsides
    - tbrownaw 9mo ago
      > only Romance language ...But we're (mostly) not one?
      - swiftcoder 9mo ago
        I mean, yes and no? In common speech we certainly lean more on Germanic vocabulary (and grammar!), but the dictionary overall has a lot more French/Latin-derived vocabulary than it does Germanic - many of them overly formal/technical for daily speech (Entertainingly, modern German also adopted the Latin-rooted "gratis")
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]

lynx97 9mo ago

The EU definitely has no concept of "love". It was founded to make trade easier. All the fuzz about humane values and morals has been tacked on more or less recently, to keep up the support for it from the population. It is the literal wolf in sheep's clothing.

waldarbeiter 9mo ago
What does "wolf in sheep's clothing" mean for you, concretely, outside of metaphors?
- odiroot 9mo ago
  Chat control and the never-ending drive to police our private communications.
  - Y-bar 9mo ago
    What exactly makes you assume that the persons arguing for open source here are not the same people who has helped us defeat earlier attempts to make chat control happen?
- lynx97 9mo ago
  Well, the EU is pretty firmly in conservative hands. Ask a random EU citizen if they know that EPP is secretly leading the EU since its conception? They will likely not realize, because they fall for the piece&love propaganda. Just look at what VDL has done since she overtook the lead? Know where she comes from? Used to be defense minister in germany. Was called "Flintenuschi" back then. And now, magically, we are supposed to invest a shitload of money into military. Thats what I call a wolf in sheep's clothing.
yohannparis 9mo ago
The US was founded to not pay taxes... Come on, you know well that most things evolve and grow.
jansper39 9mo ago

jokethrowaway 9mo ago

So, as open source developers building a public good, where is our share of EU taxes?

hartator 9mo ago
Do you mean paying EU taxes for doing open-source? :)

elric 9mo ago

Many projects made with government money are developed under the EUPL. Including some of the ones I've worked on. Oddly enough, they aren't available for download anywhere.

nandomrumber 9mo ago
There is some EUPL software available here: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/ https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/
- sam_lowry_ 9mo ago
  Where exactly? I really see nothing that qualifies as open source there. Just text.
  - bathtub365 9mo ago
    Here is the actual catalogue https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/eu-oss-catalogue https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/eu-oss-catalogue
  - joostdecock 9mo ago
    There's also this GitLab instance: https://code.europa.eu/ https://code.europa.eu/

lifetimerubyist 9mo ago

Very few people truely understand the concept of Liberty.

cindyllm 9mo ago

[dead]

troyvit 9mo ago

Just to second what you are saying, over 2025 we saw some cases where small open source projects that underpin massive infrastructure are struggling for funding, and they don't even need that much! To me this is a place where the EU can spend a few dollars and have a massive influence on the sustainability and direction of open source projects.

pphysch 9mo ago

European software industry is so interesting because my impression is that the (Western) OSS sector is largely supported by talented European developers. Just a vibe from interacting with hundreds of successful OSS projects. Europe clearly has endemic talent, and I'm not even sure it's a funding problem rather than an organizational/leadership one. They could throw money at developers who already have decent if humble QoL, or they could bring them together to build large systems that can compete with American big tech.

pabs3 9mo ago

FSFE campaign for that: https://publiccode.eu/ https://publiccode.eu/