Rebuttal: Why Open Source is Indispensable for Europe's Digital Sovereignty

The recent discourse surrounding European digital strategy rightly calls for pragmatic and effective policies. However, some criticisms leveled against Open Source-friendly approaches risk mischaracterizing the role and potential of Open Source Software (OSS) by conflating known operational challenges with fundamental strategic flaws, or by setting up easily dismantled strawman arguments.

We firmly believes that OSS is not merely a tactical choice, but a strategic cornerstone for achieving genuine European digital sovereignty, resilience, and competitiveness. While we acknowledge the need for nuance and smart implementation, dismissing OSS as "not a strategy" or an "ideological slogan" ignores its fundamental contributions and the active work being done to address its challenges.

Addressing Legitimate Challenges (Known, Understood, and Actionable)

Critics correctly point out that OSS is "not free" and requires investment in maintenance, security, governance, and skills. They rightly note that sustainability requires viable business models beyond just making code available.

Our Response: These are well-understood realities, actively discussed and addressed within the European OSS ecosystem and policy proposals. Proponents are not naive; they advocate precisely for:

• Strategic Public Funding & Procurement: Policies like "Public Money, Public Code," prioritizing supported OSS solutions in tenders, and funding for critical OSS projects and foundations directly address maintenance and sustainability.
• Ecosystem Support: Recognizing and funding "OSS vendors" and SMEs who provide the commercial support, integration, and assurance layers is crucial.
• Skills Development: Targeted education and training programs are essential and actively promoted to build the necessary capacity.
• Governance Models: The ecosystem continuously develops and refines governance models for collaborative projects. OSPOs in public administration are a concrete step.

Claiming proponents ignore these aspects is inaccurate. The challenge is not if these needs exist, but how effectively policy can support them, especially compared to the often-opaque costs and risks of proprietary lock-in.

Refuting Strawman Arguments and Mischaracterizations

Several criticisms represent a fundamental misunderstanding or misrepresentation of how OSS contributes to strategic goals:

1. Strawman: "OSS is Just Ideology, Not Strategy."

   • Reality: For Europe, adopting OSS is a highly strategic, pragmatic decision. It directly addresses core sovereignty goals:
     • Control: Ability to audit, modify, and maintain critical software independently of non-EU vendor decisions or geopolitical pressures.
     • Transparency: Essential for security verification, countering hidden vulnerabilities or backdoors inherent in proprietary black boxes, and building trust.
     • Avoiding Lock-in: Prevents dependency on single vendors, ensuring long-term flexibility and resilience.
     • Data Sovereignty: Facilitates hosting and processing data on infrastructure fully under European control, mitigating risks from extra-territorial laws like the CLOUD Act/FISA.
     • Economic Ecosystem: Fosters a diverse European ecosystem of SMEs and innovators, rather than concentrating value in a few non-EU giants.
   • Framing this as mere "ideology" ignores these tangible strategic benefits and implicitly favors the status quo of dependency.

2. Strawman: "Mandating OSS is Prescribing Implementation."

   • Reality: Advocating for an "Open Source First" principle in public procurement, or for "Public Money, Public Code," is not about blindly mandating a specific tool for every problem. It is about setting a strategic priority where clear sovereignty, transparency, and interoperability benefits align. More importantly, the push is often stronger for mandating Open Standards (per EIF v1.0) and Interoperability, which facilitates the use of OSS and prevents lock-in, guiding the market towards desired outcomes without dictating every implementation detail. This aligns with regulating for outcomes, not inputs.

3. Strawman: "OSS Doesn't Create Champions / Doesn't Scale / Lacks Governance."

   • Reality: Europe already has a significant OSS industry (EU study, CNLL study). Successful global OSS projects demonstrate scalability and sophisticated governance (often requiring, as critics note, centralized management and investment, which commercial OSS providers offer). The issue isn't an inherent inability to scale or govern, but often a lack of strategic market access and funding compared to subsidized or market-dominant proprietary competitors. Supported OSS can scale and does have robust governance. Furthermore, the collaborative nature of OSS is itself a powerful engine for (open) innovation.

4. Strawman: "OSS is Not Inherently More Secure."

   • Reality: No software is inherently perfectly secure. However, the transparency of OSS enables broader scrutiny and independent security auditing, which is impossible with proprietary code. While vulnerabilities can exist, the process for finding and fixing them can be more open and verifiable. In an era of state-sponsored threats and concerns about supply chain integrity, this transparency is a significant strategic security advantage over trusting closed-source claims.

5. Strawman: "OSS is Unsuitable for EU Diversity / Requires a Single Stack."

   • Reality: This fundamentally misunderstands OSS. Its modularity and flexibility make it ideally suited to Europe's diverse needs ("United in Diversity"). Different Member States or sectors can adopt, adapt, and combine OSS components to create tailored solutions, fostering local innovation while adhering to common Open Standards for interoperability. This is the opposite of a rigid, one-size-fits-all approach often imposed by monolithic proprietary vendors. OSS enables multiple, interoperable stacks, not one infeasible "Eurostack."

Conclusion

Open Source Software is not a silver bullet, nor is it free from challenges. However, these challenges are understood and are being actively addressed through policy proposals focused on ecosystem support, strategic procurement, funding, and skills development. Criticisms that dismiss OSS as merely tactical, ideological, or inherently flawed ignore its proven strategic value in delivering control, transparency, interoperability, and resilience – the very foundations of digital sovereignty.

Attacking OSS often serves as a distraction from the real strategic risks posed by continued reliance on dominant, non-European proprietary systems. For Europe to forge a truly sovereign and competitive digital future, a smart, well-supported, Open Source-friendly policy is not just an option; it is an indispensable necessity.