Quoting: LoudTechieEdit:
What would you guys propose?

I was thinking about stuff like this about a month ago and I’d like to see 2 things, both giving more state funding towards open-source I think could work:

1. Requirement that all software commissioned by European states be open sourced – so that it is easily maintable, available to citizens, and providers of that software can be changed (there could be exceptions for specific use-cases, like I understand to keep new military tech classified for some time; I’d still require that to eventually become open-sourced after, say, 20 or 30 years).
2. Maybe a separate open-source fund working similarly to private copying levies and the like – with a tax on income from products involving the use of open-source components. The idea would be that, say, if a company has annual income of over ~1 million euro and the product they’re selling or the infrastructure they maintain uses open-source components (libraries, databases, operating systems…), they pay some low tax (0.5%? 1%? I’ve no feel for what a specific good value would be) of the income. They could avoid paying that tax by either showing that they use absolutely no open-source (and thus don’t benefit from open-source directly) or that they are already contributing back by releasing their stuff (so if they release open-source and earn by maintaining it themselves, they’d be free from the tax). The money would be used by the state to pay foundations, societies, and other organizations maintaining and supporting open-source projects.

Point 2 is pretty much treating open-source as the public infrastructure it de facto is and fund it from taxes from the institutions that use it, as normally it’s done with public infrastructure (roads, media, health-care…).