The confusion surrounding the concept of « open source » is probably going to have major political implications. The brand new EU open source strategy doesn't seem to be purely a software strategy.

- EU open source strategy: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/open-source-strategy

In 2020, the institution released specifically a policy named « Open source software strategy », but software disappeared this time which could be a signal from a shift to a broader vision beyond « open source ».

With current documents, it seems to have a tension over the use of the term by including both open source software and open source hardware under this umbrella.

On one side, it's a software centric policy where they also specify in their COM(2026)503 documents "for the purpose of this Communication, ‘open source’ refers to software released under licences that comply with the Open Source Initiative’s Open Source Definition".

On the other side, they declare to "Prioritise open source funding in key areas like semiconductors" while stating "semiconductors: to develop, under the Chips Act 2.0, open source hardware IP such as the one based on RISC-V, targeted investment in open source electronic design automation tools;"

And this is where true confusion comes up for me: what is precisely open source hardware IP ? RISC-V is an open standard, with both open and closed hardware implementation. [https://semiengineering.com/open-source-hardware-risks/]

But open (source) hardware is about providing editable design, this sentence being confused by potentially conflating standard and design files.

The Chips Act 2.0 is more about empowering the production of semiconductors at manufacturers level, but does not seem to cover the open IP part. The open source strategy and this Chips act could be therefore two complementary layers with unclear links. [https://www.techpolicy.press/how-the-eus-tech-sovereignty-package-finally-puts-open-source-to-the-test/]

This little semantic confusion may have an impact on the entire industrial strategy of the EU. Will critical hardware components such as semi-conductors produced in the open source hardware philosophy ? Based only on open standard or requiring entire designs/source files available for production ?

The meaning and definition of « open source » remain confused, it can be a billion(s)-dollar question.

[Thought related to the work « Open Source 2.0 : From Open Source Software to Open Source Resources? » : https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20257010]

Credit: Photo by Sumaid pal Singh Bakshi, Unsplash

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