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/

(Fixing the thread 🤷🏻‍♀️)

"This vulnerability [in Log4j] existed in software maintained by a handful of volunteers, highlighting the dangerous asymmetry between open source’s economic importance and its resource allocation. In fact, the Harvard study found that just 5% of developers create 95% of open source’s economic value, yet most work without compensation or institutional support.

2/