European companies urged to play more active role in open source software development
Tech.eu John Reynolds
European companies are being told to help build open source, not just use it. The push is about digital sovereignty, and the real control comes from contributing back.
Based on reporting by Tech.eu, John Reynolds — read the original for the full story.
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European companies are being pushed to do more than quietly consume open source code. At the Open Source Summit Europe in Prague, speakers kept circling the same point: if Europe wants more sovereignty over its technology stack, it has to help build the software, not just buy it or deploy it.
That argument lands against a familiar backdrop. Europe has spent years worrying about its dependence on technology developed in the US, and the Linux Foundation says those concerns are now showing up inside organisations as a strategic priority. More than nine in ten organisations in its survey said digital sovereignty matters to their technology strategy, with open source playing a major role in giving them more control.
Thierry Carrez, general manager of Linux Foundation Europe, put it bluntly: open source can reduce dependence on any single vendor or country. But he also drew a line between casual use and real control. Consuming open source alone, he said, does not give effective control over the technology. The foundation’s view is that European organisations need to contribute upstream and take part in open governance if they want greater autonomy.
There is also money in the discipline. The foundation said companies with advanced open source governance reported an average return of more than four times their investment, compared with 3.6 times for those without formal governance structures. That is a pretty direct incentive to stop treating open source as free software floating in from nowhere.
The summit’s broader message was that this is no longer only a company issue. The EU is backing open source through the Tech Sovereignty Package and the Cyber Resilience Act, and researchers and security leaders at the event said open source can help governments share infrastructure even when they do not agree politically. AI agents added a fresh wrinkle: speakers said open source helps those systems connect safely to tools, data and other agents inside security boundaries, even as trust in the tools lags behind the pace of adoption.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the part of open source everyone likes to skip: if a company wants sovereignty, it has to do chores, not just brag about values. Europe keeps saying it wants control, then acts surprised when control turns out to require governance, skills and actual upstream work. Funny how that keeps happening.
Read more about this at: Tech.eu
