Crucially, this levy would apply equally to providers based abroad, creating a level playing field within the European market and ensuring that foreign AI companies also contribute when they operate here. The proceeds would flow into a central European fund dedicated to investing in new content creation, and supporting Europe’s cultural sectors."

3/3

"At Mistral, we are proposing a revenue-based levy that would be applied to all commercial providers placing AI models on the market or putting them into service in Europe, reflecting their use of content publicly available online.

2/3

I tried to expand this position in my input for the EC’s Open Digital Ecosystems call. I’d be happy to hear your thoughts:

https://forcrowd.org/2026/02/20/european-open-digital-ecosystems-proposal-a-progressive-open-source-strategy-for-europe/

@aral

Next steps should be:
* Scale the public funding structures (data-driven + usage-based funding), ideally at the EU-level.
* Tap into the tax system to capture the value of FOSS and channel the tax income to the fund (instead of fixed budgets).
* Allow any entity to contribute to the FOSS ecosystem and generate revenue (minimize proprietary / maximize FOSS), again across the board.

@aral The paper mentions German STF as an example, which supports FOSS across the field. Do you think that’s not the case?

I think it’s quite positive that the “FOSS should be treated as a public infrastructure” argument coming from a US-based company like Block. That alone probably can shift some minds in this space.

"Just as society doesn’t rely on voluntary contributions to maintain roads or power grids, it cannot leave the digital infrastructure underpinning a significant proportion of the economy to the goodwill of a handful of maintainers."

"Open source is a civic resource and a public good. Let's make sure it's treated like one."

5/5

"The policy imperative is clear: treating open source as a public good means establishing sustainable funding mechanisms, creating liability frameworks that don’t burden volunteers, supporting security audits for critical projects, and ensuring that the $8.8 trillion in annual value creation doesn’t collapse due to market failure."

4/

This creates what economists call a “tragedy of the commons” scenario: everyone benefits from open source, but without coordinated protection, the resource faces depletion through maintainer burnout, security vulnerabilities, and project abandonment. The free-rider problem inherent to public goods means that rational economic actors will continue consuming open source value without contributing to its sustainability, necessitating policy intervention."

3/