Thierry Carrez, general manager of Linux Foundation Europe, told The Stack at Open Source Summit Europe in Prague that European companies need to contribute more resources to the open source projects they depend on, arguing the continent is not strategically investing in the governance of the ecosystems it relies on and risks leaving them dominated by US and Chinese companies. He pointed to the foundation’s 2026 State of Open Source in Europe report, which found that 59 percent of European organisations surveyed contributed code upstream but only 37 percent took part in project governance, and said around 38 percent of contributions to Linux Foundation projects came from Europe while only 15 percent of governance activity did. Carrez framed the gap as a digital-sovereignty problem: contributing code without sharing responsibility for maintenance, security and direction does not give European organisations real control over the technology, even as governments adopt open source alternatives to products such as Microsoft Office.
Europe needs to "step up" on open source funding, Linux Foundation Europe GM says
Thierry Carrez, general manager of Linux Foundation Europe, told The Stack at Open Source Summit Europe in Prague that European companies need to contribute more resources to the open source projects they depend on, arguing the continent is not strategically investing in the governance of the ecosystems it relies on and risks leaving them dominated by US and Chinese companies. He pointed to the foundation's 2026 State of Open Source in Europe report, which found that 59 percent of European organisations surveyed contributed code upstream but only 37 percent took part in project governance, and said around 38 percent of contributions to Linux Foundation projects came from Europe while only 15 percent of governance activity did. Carrez framed the gap as a digital-sovereignty problem: contributing code without sharing responsibility for maintenance, security and direction does not give European organisations real control over the technology, even as governments adopt open source alternatives to products such as Microsoft Office.
Source: Thestack