Comment by Dr4kn
2 days ago
The EU governments should gradually start switching to open source solutions. New software projects should be open source by default and only closed if there is a real reason for it.
The EU is already home to many OS contributors and companies. I like the Red Hat approach where you are profitable, but with open source solutions. It's great for governments because you get support, but it's much easier to compete, which reduces prices.
Smaller companies also give more of their money to open source. Bigger companies can always fork it and develop it internally and can therefore pressure devs to do work for less. Smaller companies have to rely on the projects to keep going and doing it all in house would be way too expensive for most.
> I like the Red Hat approach where you are profitable, but with open source solutions.
The Red Hat that was bought by IBM?
I agree with your goals, but the devil is in the methods. If we want governments to support open source, the appropriate method is probably a legislative requirement for an open source license + a requirement to fund the developer.
It seems like every other year I read a story about Munich switching to Linux. It keeps happening so evidently it's not sticking very well. Either there are usability or maintenance problems, or Microsoft's sales and lobbying is too effective.
idk if you meant this, but I thought of F-Droid and other major open source projects being publicly funded by EU.