When the European Commission published its public consultation for a Communication “Towards European open digital ecosystems” on 6 January, hundrets of submissions came in within the first days. Yesterday, the consultation closed, with 1658 submissions one of the highest contribution rates ever.
APELL welcomes the Commission’s display of support for the Open Source ecosystem and the fact that it has understood how Open Source plays a strategic role for its digital sovereignty goals at the highest level. Because Open Source means that users do not even enter into a lock-in with providers of products and services. On the contrary, they receive the entire product, including its source code, full transparency and reproducibility.
With our submission to the public consultation, we urge the Commission to take decisive action to raise awareness, institutionalise and promote Open Source knowledge and capability, stimulate uptake in the private sector, and execute on the responsibility of authorities and governments to invest in, and contribute to, our Open Source Digital Public Infrastructure. With that, we realise and strengthen the power of the Open Source businesses that have invested, and continue to invest millions of Euros yearly into its development and maintenance for the benefit of Europe’s global competitiveness.
(Title photo credit: Bryophyte Leaf Cells: KarlGaff, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
