Should we start a Citizens EU Countries Initiative to make the european FOSS alternatives the default in the EU public administrations systems software stack?
Find initiative | European Citizens' Initiative
With funding put aside to compensate the developers.
I definitely like the sentiment, but how would this work exactly? Like what exactly are we trying to accomplish? I'm having trouble to see what it would mean in reality.
Let's say for example a small local government want to do a thing with software. Normally they put out a tender for local suppliers to get the thing done. These suppliers use a whole scale of software solutions. For some things they all use the same big brand solution because that's just what everyone uses, for other things everyone does their own thing. Some may include open source solutions, some may not. Some may even have created their own solutions. Especially with government this is very common. Governments usually have to do very specific things in a very specific way. Some provider comes along with their own custom made to do that exact thing. And once a couple of local governments use it and work out the issues, a lot of them will use it. Especially if specific certifications apply.
So how would this work if this becomes a law?
If the government puts out a tender, would they be required to use a supplier that uses open source software in their stack? Or does it only given them "bonus points" (not sure how that would work?). And does the provider need to use open source in all of their stack? Or how much is allowed? Say they provide a service that's fully open source, but the people in the office use Windows on their machines, would that disqualify them?
And one of the nightmares of the previous decade was GDPR. Specifically I mention it because one of the requirements is for any provider to have a personal data processing statement. But not just between the customer and the supplier, but also any suppliers the supplier uses and every supplier they use etc. etc. This is why you get those crazy "Do you want to share with our 3924 partners?" prompts. So if we circle back to our open source proposal, does the provider need to use open source or do all of their suppliers also need to use open source.
This is not even mentioning different open source licenses, like what is open "enough"? And how does this work when a commercial company gets a government grant to create something? I've seen governments that require the end-product to be open sourced at some point, but not in all cases.
And do we also care about how it's open sourced? Like does the EU need to setup their own Github alternative and require everything to be on there? Because releasing the sources on something controlled by Microsoft feels wrong.
I'm all in for this and if anyone want to put some serious time into this, I would definitely be available to help out. I have some practical experience in this space and I can warn you it gets complicated real fast.
The aim of the initiative would be to express to the EU commission the citizens desire to become less dependent on the big tech companies. I appreciate the complexity you mention, but it would be the commission to work out what is achievable or not. My view is that everything is, it's just the question of timeframe. There are areas, e.g. my school example, that would be easier to transform, other areas as you say more difficult. But we need to drive this and keep on the pressure, otherwise nothing will change. It's already great to see that we are talking about it
The issue is, if the request is too vague or obviously infeasible, it will simply get rejected.
I'm all for telling our politicians we need to move away from walled gardens and US based big tech. But I think recent events have already made that clear to them.
A strongly worded feeling might feel good to get supported. But if we want actual change, we need to request something that can be acted upon. Of course the time line would be long and it's up to the EU to implement it. But if we want the time line to be shorter, we need to provide something they can use.
If we can identify some low hanging fruit without a lot of strings attached, I'm sure we can put a proposal together. Then we would need to drum up support, which can be hard but is probably at least partially doable.
Having worked with some local suppliers for government software and actively participating in the domain myself I would expect a lot of pushback but I don't see it as impossible within Europe. So far everyone shifts based on requirements. I expect some things to lag behind.
License: OSI compliant is enough and easy to express. That even allows for modern AI because it's just open weights iirc. There is EUPL but I expect that to be too specific.
I don't see why you'd make the suggestion that only foss can be used by any supplying company. It seems obvious that the software itself and the systems it runs on should be open source. The software solution should be open source.
I would appreciate a timetable. Shifting existing contracts will be very hard and expensive. For things made within Europe, assuming this is a European initiative, I expect almost all open market solutions to switch to a different model.
But even lacking all this detail, it shows a clear desire of Europeans to use foss, and thus makes it more appealing to add this into law.