Opinion - Europe is famous for having the most tightly regulated non-existent tech sector in the world. This is a mildly unfair characterization, as there are plenty of tech enterprises across the continent, quite a respectable smattering if it wasn’t for the US doing everything at least ten times bigger.
Quite the problem, sighed the EU’s 2024 Draghi Report on European competitiveness. Those regulations regressively hit startups and SMEs the hardest, there’s no central capital market for funding innovation, while Uncle Sam’s wallet opens wide for the ambitious and talented. It looked bad in 2024, when tech deficit was primarily an economic matter. Mix in the changes since then, and you can apply the five word version of all Russian history — “And then it got worse.”
The EU knows what it wants and why it wants it.
I can only hope that it really does. There’s no doubt closed source companies will try to lobby for closed source components, regardless of whether it’s good for the EU or not.
If you haven’t heard yet, you can provide evidence and opinion to the European Commission on the importance of opensource here.