Brussels plots open source push to pry Europe off Big Tech

The European Commission has launched a fresh consultation into open source, setting out its ambitions for Europe's developer communities to go beyond propping up US tech giants' platforms.

In a "Call for Evidence" published this week, Brussels says the EU's reliance on non-European technology suppliers (read: US tech giants) has become a strategic liability, limiting choice, weakening competitiveness, and creating supply chain risks across everything from cloud services to critical infrastructure. The consultation, which will run from January 6 to February 3, is an early move toward a formal strategy on "European Open Digital Ecosystems," which would treat open source as core infrastructure rather than a nice-to-have.

According to the Commission, dependence on foreign vendors makes it harder for Europe to control its digital stack, potentially opening the door to security and resilience issues in sensitive sectors. Open source offers a way out of that bind by underpinning "a diverse portfolio of high-quality and secure digital solutions" that can act as viable alternatives to proprietary platforms, the EC said.

"A strong and developed open source sector can effectively contribute to further EU innovation and accelerate standardisation, strengthening the EU's international competitiveness, preserving its sovereignty, and ensuring its continuous economic prosperity, security, resilience, and global influence. Innovators, startups and small to medium-sized enterprises are significant drivers as they bring innovative open source-based products and solutions to the market," the Commission said.

By the Commission's own reckoning, somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of modern software relies on open source components, which means it already props up the digital economy whether anyone likes it or not. Brussels' gripe is that Europe does much of the building, while the commercial and strategic value too often ends up in the hands of big tech companies based elsewhere.

To close that gap, the Commission says it will sketch out a new EU-wide approach to open source and revisit its 2020-2023 strategy, which largely focused on how EU bodies use and share code internally. This time around, Brussels wants to treat open source as an economic and political asset, tied directly to sovereignty, competitiveness, and cybersecurity.

Under the plan, cloud, AI, cybersecurity, open hardware, and industrial software are all in scope, including applications in cars and manufacturing. The Commission says the focus this time is on scaling and deployment, not another round of experimental projects.

Brussels admits that funding alone hasn't solved the problem. The EU has backed everything from Next Generation Internet to RISC-V and open vehicle software, but too many projects struggle to make the jump from grant-funded code to something that survives in the market.

"Supporting open source communities solely through research and innovation programmes is not sufficient for successful upscaling," the EC said in its Call for Evidence, adding that it is "critical to support emerging developer communities and businesses in scaling up."

The Commission lays out a mix of possible moves, including incentives for public and private users to contribute upstream, support for EU open source businesses, and help for startups that risk falling over as they grow. It also argues that open code can shine a light on supply chains and make vulnerabilities easier to track down.

Open source has become entangled with platform power, as US tech giants monetize much of the world's collaborative code. Even Microsoft-owned GitHub has warned that the sustainability of open source infrastructure is under strain, a concern recently echoed by a coalition of heavyweight open source foundations. ®