OpenForum Europealong with various organizations and companies dedicated to open source development have sent an open letter to the EU in which call for the creation of an EU Sovereign Technology Fund (EU-STF) so that it open source software has more financial support by the European institutions. Above all, from each to the maintenance of open source software, which suffers from a lack of investment that the signatories of the letter consider chronic.
The signatories, among which there are companies such as Mozilla, Murena, Collabora, OpenFuture, Nextcloud, Mercedez-Benz, the Linux Foundation, the Matrix Foundation, GitHub, Ecosia, Creative Commons, Proton, Red Hat or SuSE; They ask the EU to invest a minimum of 350 million over seven years to maintain the critical open source software on which a good part of European digital infrastructure relies.
Without this investment, as the signatories of the letter point out, Europe risks governments, companies and citizens being exposed to security threats, vulnerabilities in the supply chain or blocking of suppliers that makes it difficult to switch from one to another when necessary.
The letter recalls that open source software is at the core of the European digital economy, as well as public institutions, and points out that it is everywhere: from digital identity systems to energy networks or health platforms, through financial services and mobility networks. Despite this, these technologies usually suffer from a lack of financing, which leads to the existence of risks that can endanger different infrastructures and platforms.
The fund they propose to create in the letter, EU-STF, would be based on the initiatives of the German Sovereign Technology Agency, and would offer investment for social purposes to all of Europe, with the aim of securing, maintaining and strengthening open digital infrastructure.
The signatories of the letter call on EU legislators to make the launch of the EU-SFT fund in the EU’s 2028-2034 multiannual financial framework (MFF) a priority. Also that member states commit to pooled financing to scale investment in open source maintenance, beyond certain fragmented national initiatives.
Furthermore, the signatory organizations remember that through support for common-based resources, such as open source software, The EU can reduce strategic dependencies on third partiesand ensure that its digital transformation reflects the values of openness and collaboration.
