7 ms·

The EU Open Source Strategy

152 points by vrganj 5mo ago

internet_points 5mo ago
is any money going into it, or are they just "supporting"?
- anonzzzies 5mo ago
  There is money but it's all vague and hard to get and usually with tax breaks instead of just money. I would opensource everything we built, but I have to eat something so it'll be when I die and/or the company is sold and/or we earned enough to make everyone eat during their life (with some reasonable amounts that assume hyper inflation won't happen) (it is contractually arranged). Many EU gov institutions use our software and would LOVE for us to open source it - they would immediately stop paying.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
- tralalalalala 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- trilogic 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- nxm 5mo ago
  Virtue signaling
- throw-the-towel 5mo ago
  Duuude, wanting to earn money is so US-pilled. (If you're a worker, that is.)
ragebol 5mo ago
All great, but I would love EU and (national, local, ...) governments in the EU simply use the open source stuff already available. Often there is an 'you must open source, unless you explain why not' and then there is some faff about why they really need to be buying more stuff from Microsoft (which is more and more cloud stuff and thus under the CLOUD act etc.) Time to get rid of the 'unless' bit.
- pjmlp 5mo ago
  Although I usually come up negative on my The Year of Linux Desktop comments, that would already be a starting point. Unless EU citzens are able to easily walk into FNAC, Vobis, Cool Blue, MediaMarket, Carrefour, Publico,.... and come out with a laptop or desktop with e.g. SuSE Linux already set up, this will always be a niche thing from nerds assembling their own PCs, or finding their ways into Tuxedo and co. And there needs to be some kind of value in actually doing that for normal people, otherwise it will be just like netbooks, most people will return them and ask for a Windows PC, after being "tricked" into getting one of those Linux PCs.
  - bjackman 5mo ago
    I do not think I want my public sector running GNU/Linux desktops. There is no distro that meets the security requirements. I don't know if Windows is better, I have heard rumours that it's pretty bad. I know MacOS is MUCH better from a security PoV but I definitely don't want my public sector shelling out to Apple and I don't think it meets the boring IT management requirements anyway (I think big tech has a lot of crazy workarounds to make their MacBook fleets workable). So yeah overall no good options here. I would love to see the EU fund development of a better distro for this usecase, but doubt it's the highest ROI thing you can do in this space.
    - omnimus 5mo ago
      Sounds like the Linux is still the least worst? There is at least possibility of having secure and quite independent machine. The question is not about distro, it's who does the support and how it's all put together. There are big vendors who sell linux to enterprises that for sure have to be highly secure.
mitjam 5mo ago
A challenge they forgot to mention is EU‘s very own new Product Lianility Directive. Although the Directive exempts free and open-source software (OSS) from strict product liability, it does so only if the software is developed or provided outside the course of a commercial activity. As soon as a company integrates OSS into its own commercial product or uses it for economic purposes, the company becomes liable for any potential defects in the open-source component. Looks Like fun for freelancers and companies who get Clients thanks to their Open Source projects, for example.
- adamtulinius 5mo ago
  Does this mean that you think a company should not be held liable for defects caused in a product they ship, if the defect is caused by an open source component? Why not?
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
- pploug 5mo ago
  Company sells product for profit - they are liable for the product and all its subcomponents - there is nothing unfair about this - it doesn't matter if you found the components in a hole in the ground or on github - if you are selling a product based off it, you are liable. For freelancers / oss companies - you can still sell services such as consulting or support - without selling your oss project - then its a service - not a product.
sublimefire 5mo ago
I have so many mixed feelings about it. I mean there OSS software already, nobody prevents its use. It would have been better to just give OSS grants to SMEs who use OSS that originates in EU. But this is internet we are talking about, if I have an OSS repo and it contains contributions from Chinese or US citizens, is it still EU OSS? The core underlying issue is that nobody is incentivised to use EU “only”, if that changes the you will see the results. It does not even talk about devs like me who create such software.
- nryoo 5mo ago
  [flagged]
greatgib 5mo ago
Always the same broken pattern of the EU: throwing shitload of money to the big actors of a field without really a coherent strategy or a real control of how the funds are used. Like that, a few companies are specialized in sucking public funds and delivering nothing. Or just the minimum to say that they did something. Again here, no money will be directed to the thousands of core and essential OSS projects that are maintained by individuals without a corporate backing. Or to the individual contributors that are the key to these stacks. Instead, the only one that will be able to get money, legally per EU policy, will be consortium of suckers and eventually nice but useless researchers in University...
- Galanwe 5mo ago
  > Like that, a few companies are specialized in sucking public funds and delivering nothing. Not just public, private funds as well. Typical EU, I call that helicopter regulating: you see a problem, throw a regulation at it, then close you eyes. GDPR pop-ups are the most obvious example, but there are so many more. For instance, now apparently companies can opt to send payslips digitally instead of physically (paper). Of course, some smart ass nitpicked that employees could loose or change their mail address, so the company is now forced to store digitally delivered payslips in some kind of European-hosted vault for 10 years. And since no sane company want to be liable for that, we now have a wonderful ecosystem of trash "payslip digital vaults" startups, which companies use to proxy-send employee payslips. So in essence, my company is now sending my payslips (with name, address, contact details, compensation breakdown, etc) to a stupid start-up with egregious ToS, just because "send it by mail and let the employee back it up" was too simple. Thanks !!!
- beernet 5mo ago
  > Like that, a few companies are specialized in sucking public funds and delivering nothing. Or just the minimum to say that they did something. Agreed. Fraunhofer institute in Germany is a prime example.
  - vrganj 5mo ago
    You mean the guys that invented MP3s and were major contributors to h264?
trolleski 5mo ago
[flagged]
- madduci 5mo ago
  See the EUDI Wallet running on (surprise surprise) only Android and iOS for mobile..
acidhousemcnab 5mo ago
[flagged]
beernet 5mo ago
They didn't even bother removing the typical AI slop from the text, lol
esperent 5mo ago
I wish there was somewhere I could earnestly and intelligently have discussions about EU related tech and tech policy, but HN isn't it. As you can see already in this thread, there's 14 comments besides mine and they are 100% negative, and about 95% low effort/reactionary. Of course there's a lot to criticize and also to appreciate about the EU. But this is supposed to be a forum for intelligent, thoughtful discussion and yet as soon as the EU gets mentioned it basically turns into reddit.
- scihuber 5mo ago
  [dead]
- omnimus 5mo ago
  It's not only HN. You can see big tech media hate against any effort europe does. Everybody is mocking europe for building 10 years old chip fabs or their measly small unusable clouds or bad startup scene. It's interesting because not that long ago nobody cared about what europe did in tech. Or more like everybody was fine with the fact that europe imported computers and exported something else. It was like that forever. I am not sure where this is coming from. It almost seems like even these weak efforts might mess up with somebodys business.
  - earthnail 5mo ago
    It’s even more interesting because a big supply chain problem during Covid were related to old chips used in tons of mechanical engineering products, like cars. Given that experience you could argue that the old fabs are much better value for money for resiliency.
    - sunshine-o 5mo ago
      Asianometry just released a video about this: The EU Chips Act is a Failure [0] Definitely the most cynical video he ever released. - [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqoX9OIR-DI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqoX9OIR-DI
codingjoe 5mo ago
Empty words. Without changes to anti-circumvention laws, safe harbor commitments for security researchers and serious funding for foss projects nothing is going to change.
- ExoticPearTree 5mo ago
  > serious funding for foss projects this is a sure way for grifters to make a boatload of money by lobbying for various projects to be funded.
- codingjoe 5mo ago
  ... and I'd still be very happy for them. Some money, is better than none. Besides, supply chain payments are already a thing and help maintainers like myself already while providing security benefits for corporations.
fleroviumna 5mo ago
[dead]
vool 5mo ago
Just a reminder that "Made in America" Truth Social is an EU funded Open Source project.
- cromka 5mo ago
  Is it?
  - preisschild 5mo ago
    Its built on Mastodon, but truth social itself is not funded by the EU
    - cromka 5mo ago
      I assumed that's what they were actually talking about, but boy, what a way to manipulate... I seriously cannot understand why people chose to be like that.
nickslaughter02 5mo ago
Will EU mandated backdoors be open source too? > When it describes how the groundwork might be laid for mandating encryption backdoors, the EU chooses to use euphemisms such as creating roadmaps for “lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement” and seeking “technological solutions for accessing encrypted data.” https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-protecteu-strategy-encryption-backdoor-law-enforcement https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-protecteu-strategy-encryption-b... > European Commission pushes for encryption ‘backdoors’ https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/04/european-commission-pushes-for-encryption-backdoors/ https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/04/european-commission-pushes...
lyu07282 5mo ago
To people confused or wondering why it's too little, too late, too incompetent, etc.: The EU makes a lot more sense when you understand it's a neoliberal institution. Just giving people money to work on open source directly would violate state aid/market disruption rules, they aren't allowed to do that because that could negatively impact the profit of some shareholder somewhere. Member states that want to do that even have to ask permission from the commission if they want to give aid to companies [1]. Everything is like that with the EU, they aren't like China that can just put money whereever to develop or fix strategically, rather the EU can't do anything strategically, or fix anything. It's by design they aren't incompetent, that is what market liberalism is. It's core to what they mean when they say "European values". [1] https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/state-aid/overview_en https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/state-aid/overview_e...
- js8 5mo ago
  > The EU makes a lot more sense when you understand it's a neoliberal institution I think that's a perfect summary. As an aside, regarding what I would like EU to do in opensource - when American government writes some code, it must be put in the public domain (no copyright). EU doesn't have a similar rule.
  - lyu07282 5mo ago
    That's true, it's an interesting case where the EU is even more ideologically committed than the US, like licenses on photographs taken by ESA vs. NASA for example, but it's everything. With universities it's similar, publicly funded research gets patented (including software!) and exploited by private enterprise, but even worse private industry dictates the areas of research so it's impossible for there to ever be a coherent research strategy in the EU.
  - throw-the-towel 5mo ago
    BTW, this doesn't just apply to code -- everything the US govt releases publicly is in the public domain. This is why, for example, you can find US Foreign Service Institute language textbooks floating around the net.
FpUser 5mo ago
I think unless they have some alternative to Github (Codeberg yes) but with comparable number of repo's this strategy does not yet look very encouraging. Difference between number of open repos is huge, about 100 times
sylware 5mo ago
As far as I know EU is a full slave of Big Tech and does not have the intent to actually break free (it is going to hurt, the more you get into Big Tech, the more it will hurt to break free). First thing first, restore web sites in a solid security network infrastructure. Namely, noscript/basic HTML.
dvh 5mo ago
EU should fork Android
ChrisArchitect 5mo ago
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48410602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48410602
tsoukase 5mo ago
There is the light headed assumption that any time propr software can be replaced by open source. By regulation, by being fed up with closed source, by saying so etc. It cannot, it's very hard. In this realm, software is like a car. Would you buy an open source car? You might know any aspect of it but where would be the professional support, the strict safety regulations, the security feeling that you are under the wing of a company? I am full OSS, but I am not sure for the average Joe and Mary or better for the Oliver, Lucas, Matteo and Sofia.

152 points by vrganj 5mo ago

internet_points 5mo ago

is any money going into it, or are they just "supporting"?

anonzzzies 5mo ago
There is money but it's all vague and hard to get and usually with tax breaks instead of just money. I would opensource everything we built, but I have to eat something so it'll be when I die and/or the company is sold and/or we earned enough to make everyone eat during their life (with some reasonable amounts that assume hyper inflation won't happen) (it is contractually arranged). Many EU gov institutions use our software and would LOVE for us to open source it - they would immediately stop paying.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
tralalalalala 5mo ago
[flagged]
trilogic 5mo ago
[flagged]
nxm 5mo ago
Virtue signaling
throw-the-towel 5mo ago
Duuude, wanting to earn money is so US-pilled. (If you're a worker, that is.)

ragebol 5mo ago

All great, but I would love EU and (national, local, ...) governments in the EU simply use the open source stuff already available. Often there is an 'you must open source, unless you explain why not' and then there is some faff about why they really need to be buying more stuff from Microsoft (which is more and more cloud stuff and thus under the CLOUD act etc.) Time to get rid of the 'unless' bit.

pjmlp 5mo ago
Although I usually come up negative on my The Year of Linux Desktop comments, that would already be a starting point. Unless EU citzens are able to easily walk into FNAC, Vobis, Cool Blue, MediaMarket, Carrefour, Publico,.... and come out with a laptop or desktop with e.g. SuSE Linux already set up, this will always be a niche thing from nerds assembling their own PCs, or finding their ways into Tuxedo and co. And there needs to be some kind of value in actually doing that for normal people, otherwise it will be just like netbooks, most people will return them and ask for a Windows PC, after being "tricked" into getting one of those Linux PCs.
- bjackman 5mo ago
  I do not think I want my public sector running GNU/Linux desktops. There is no distro that meets the security requirements. I don't know if Windows is better, I have heard rumours that it's pretty bad. I know MacOS is MUCH better from a security PoV but I definitely don't want my public sector shelling out to Apple and I don't think it meets the boring IT management requirements anyway (I think big tech has a lot of crazy workarounds to make their MacBook fleets workable). So yeah overall no good options here. I would love to see the EU fund development of a better distro for this usecase, but doubt it's the highest ROI thing you can do in this space.
  - omnimus 5mo ago
    Sounds like the Linux is still the least worst? There is at least possibility of having secure and quite independent machine. The question is not about distro, it's who does the support and how it's all put together. There are big vendors who sell linux to enterprises that for sure have to be highly secure.

mitjam 5mo ago

A challenge they forgot to mention is EU‘s very own new Product Lianility Directive. Although the Directive exempts free and open-source software (OSS) from strict product liability, it does so only if the software is developed or provided outside the course of a commercial activity. As soon as a company integrates OSS into its own commercial product or uses it for economic purposes, the company becomes liable for any potential defects in the open-source component. Looks Like fun for freelancers and companies who get Clients thanks to their Open Source projects, for example.

adamtulinius 5mo ago
Does this mean that you think a company should not be held liable for defects caused in a product they ship, if the defect is caused by an open source component? Why not?
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
pploug 5mo ago
Company sells product for profit - they are liable for the product and all its subcomponents - there is nothing unfair about this - it doesn't matter if you found the components in a hole in the ground or on github - if you are selling a product based off it, you are liable. For freelancers / oss companies - you can still sell services such as consulting or support - without selling your oss project - then its a service - not a product.

sublimefire 5mo ago

I have so many mixed feelings about it. I mean there OSS software already, nobody prevents its use. It would have been better to just give OSS grants to SMEs who use OSS that originates in EU. But this is internet we are talking about, if I have an OSS repo and it contains contributions from Chinese or US citizens, is it still EU OSS? The core underlying issue is that nobody is incentivised to use EU “only”, if that changes the you will see the results. It does not even talk about devs like me who create such software.

nryoo 5mo ago
[flagged]

greatgib 5mo ago

Always the same broken pattern of the EU: throwing shitload of money to the big actors of a field without really a coherent strategy or a real control of how the funds are used. Like that, a few companies are specialized in sucking public funds and delivering nothing. Or just the minimum to say that they did something. Again here, no money will be directed to the thousands of core and essential OSS projects that are maintained by individuals without a corporate backing. Or to the individual contributors that are the key to these stacks. Instead, the only one that will be able to get money, legally per EU policy, will be consortium of suckers and eventually nice but useless researchers in University...

Galanwe 5mo ago
> Like that, a few companies are specialized in sucking public funds and delivering nothing. Not just public, private funds as well. Typical EU, I call that helicopter regulating: you see a problem, throw a regulation at it, then close you eyes. GDPR pop-ups are the most obvious example, but there are so many more. For instance, now apparently companies can opt to send payslips digitally instead of physically (paper). Of course, some smart ass nitpicked that employees could loose or change their mail address, so the company is now forced to store digitally delivered payslips in some kind of European-hosted vault for 10 years. And since no sane company want to be liable for that, we now have a wonderful ecosystem of trash "payslip digital vaults" startups, which companies use to proxy-send employee payslips. So in essence, my company is now sending my payslips (with name, address, contact details, compensation breakdown, etc) to a stupid start-up with egregious ToS, just because "send it by mail and let the employee back it up" was too simple. Thanks !!!
beernet 5mo ago
> Like that, a few companies are specialized in sucking public funds and delivering nothing. Or just the minimum to say that they did something. Agreed. Fraunhofer institute in Germany is a prime example.
- vrganj 5mo ago
  You mean the guys that invented MP3s and were major contributors to h264?

trolleski 5mo ago

[flagged]

madduci 5mo ago
See the EUDI Wallet running on (surprise surprise) only Android and iOS for mobile..

acidhousemcnab 5mo ago

[flagged]

beernet 5mo ago

They didn't even bother removing the typical AI slop from the text, lol

esperent 5mo ago

I wish there was somewhere I could earnestly and intelligently have discussions about EU related tech and tech policy, but HN isn't it. As you can see already in this thread, there's 14 comments besides mine and they are 100% negative, and about 95% low effort/reactionary. Of course there's a lot to criticize and also to appreciate about the EU. But this is supposed to be a forum for intelligent, thoughtful discussion and yet as soon as the EU gets mentioned it basically turns into reddit.

scihuber 5mo ago
[dead]
omnimus 5mo ago
It's not only HN. You can see big tech media hate against any effort europe does. Everybody is mocking europe for building 10 years old chip fabs or their measly small unusable clouds or bad startup scene. It's interesting because not that long ago nobody cared about what europe did in tech. Or more like everybody was fine with the fact that europe imported computers and exported something else. It was like that forever. I am not sure where this is coming from. It almost seems like even these weak efforts might mess up with somebodys business.
- earthnail 5mo ago
  It’s even more interesting because a big supply chain problem during Covid were related to old chips used in tons of mechanical engineering products, like cars. Given that experience you could argue that the old fabs are much better value for money for resiliency.
  - sunshine-o 5mo ago
    Asianometry just released a video about this: The EU Chips Act is a Failure [0] Definitely the most cynical video he ever released. - [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqoX9OIR-DI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqoX9OIR-DI

codingjoe 5mo ago

Empty words. Without changes to anti-circumvention laws, safe harbor commitments for security researchers and serious funding for foss projects nothing is going to change.

ExoticPearTree 5mo ago
> serious funding for foss projects this is a sure way for grifters to make a boatload of money by lobbying for various projects to be funded.
codingjoe 5mo ago
... and I'd still be very happy for them. Some money, is better than none. Besides, supply chain payments are already a thing and help maintainers like myself already while providing security benefits for corporations.

fleroviumna 5mo ago

[dead]

vool 5mo ago

Just a reminder that "Made in America" Truth Social is an EU funded Open Source project.

cromka 5mo ago
Is it?
- preisschild 5mo ago
  Its built on Mastodon, but truth social itself is not funded by the EU
  - cromka 5mo ago
    I assumed that's what they were actually talking about, but boy, what a way to manipulate... I seriously cannot understand why people chose to be like that.

nickslaughter02 5mo ago

Will EU mandated backdoors be open source too? > When it describes how the groundwork might be laid for mandating encryption backdoors, the EU chooses to use euphemisms such as creating roadmaps for “lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement” and seeking “technological solutions for accessing encrypted data.” https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-protecteu-strategy-encryption-backdoor-law-enforcement https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-protecteu-strategy-encryption-b... > European Commission pushes for encryption ‘backdoors’ https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/04/european-commission-pushes-for-encryption-backdoors/ https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/04/european-commission-pushes...

lyu07282 5mo ago

To people confused or wondering why it's too little, too late, too incompetent, etc.: The EU makes a lot more sense when you understand it's a neoliberal institution. Just giving people money to work on open source directly would violate state aid/market disruption rules, they aren't allowed to do that because that could negatively impact the profit of some shareholder somewhere. Member states that want to do that even have to ask permission from the commission if they want to give aid to companies [1]. Everything is like that with the EU, they aren't like China that can just put money whereever to develop or fix strategically, rather the EU can't do anything strategically, or fix anything. It's by design they aren't incompetent, that is what market liberalism is. It's core to what they mean when they say "European values". [1] https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/state-aid/overview_en https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/state-aid/overview_e...

js8 5mo ago
> The EU makes a lot more sense when you understand it's a neoliberal institution I think that's a perfect summary. As an aside, regarding what I would like EU to do in opensource - when American government writes some code, it must be put in the public domain (no copyright). EU doesn't have a similar rule.
- lyu07282 5mo ago
  That's true, it's an interesting case where the EU is even more ideologically committed than the US, like licenses on photographs taken by ESA vs. NASA for example, but it's everything. With universities it's similar, publicly funded research gets patented (including software!) and exploited by private enterprise, but even worse private industry dictates the areas of research so it's impossible for there to ever be a coherent research strategy in the EU.
- throw-the-towel 5mo ago
  BTW, this doesn't just apply to code -- everything the US govt releases publicly is in the public domain. This is why, for example, you can find US Foreign Service Institute language textbooks floating around the net.

FpUser 5mo ago

I think unless they have some alternative to Github (Codeberg yes) but with comparable number of repo's this strategy does not yet look very encouraging. Difference between number of open repos is huge, about 100 times

sylware 5mo ago

As far as I know EU is a full slave of Big Tech and does not have the intent to actually break free (it is going to hurt, the more you get into Big Tech, the more it will hurt to break free). First thing first, restore web sites in a solid security network infrastructure. Namely, noscript/basic HTML.

dvh 5mo ago

EU should fork Android

ChrisArchitect 5mo ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48410602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48410602

tsoukase 5mo ago

There is the light headed assumption that any time propr software can be replaced by open source. By regulation, by being fed up with closed source, by saying so etc. It cannot, it's very hard. In this realm, software is like a car. Would you buy an open source car? You might know any aspect of it but where would be the professional support, the strict safety regulations, the security feeling that you are under the wing of a company? I am full OSS, but I am not sure for the average Joe and Mary or better for the Oliver, Lucas, Matteo and Sofia.