“The objective of the study was to investigate and quantify the economic impact of OSS and OSH [Open Source Software and Open Source Hardware] on the European economy,” the study’s authors, working for the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology at the European Commission, explain.
“The study also identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges of open source in relevant ICT policies, such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), digitising European industry, the connected car, high performance computing, big data, distributed ledger technologies, and more.
“The main breakthrough of the study,” its authors note, “is the identification of open source as a public good. This shows a change of paradigm from the previous irreconcilable difference between closed and open source, and points to a new era in which digital businesses are built using open source assets. This information is essential to develop policy actions in the field. The study also values the economic impact of open source commitments on the EU economy.”
#technology #EU #opensource #government #economy
Thanks the link is much appreciated. I’d never heard of the NGI and I’m glad that the EU is putting the money where their mouth is.
Yeah except that the current focus seems to be on all sorts of stupid blockchain stuff. I guess this kind of prioritization driven by political buzzwords is the curse of all these public funded endeavors and I am glad at least some of the funds are handed over to organisations like NLnet that seem to have a much better understanding what makes sense and what is just blockchain BS.
Yeah, it’s hard to imagine how the blockchain stuff coincides with the sustainability goal of the NGI Initiative. I also find it ironic that the pdf that explains the research and innovation program, specifically targeting open source privacy, is made with MS Word on OSX. https://www.ngi.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/48/2020/04/NGI4ALL_NGI_Projects-and-people.pdf