Hello Matthias Kunkel,
thank you kindly for your signature to APELL's Open Letter on the
occasion of the Summit on European Digital Sovereignty –
Declaration
of Digital Independence.
Public co-signatures: digitalindependence.eu
You can now find the open letter and your signature on our
dedicated
website <https://digitalindependence.eu/>
where the full letter can be downloaded and public co-signatures can
be added.
Please share the website and the letter with your network! You can
also share our posts on
LinkedIn,
Mastodon,
and
Bluesky.
Call on the French and German governments to change the
closing declaration
Over the weekend,
EurActiv
published the draft closing declaration for the summit
(subscription needed).
The document uses unfortunate language, stating that "Open-source
solutions
can play an important role enhancing digital
sovereignty,
provided they meet high cybersecurity standards and
are
complemented by reliable proprietary technologies where
appropriate."
This language does not reflect
- the fact that between
90%
of business software is based on Open Source. The very
"proprietary technologies" the document speaks of are itself
dependent on the
enterprise-grade, de-facto standard that is
Open Source.
The draft does not reflect the realities of
- the German state of
Schleswig-Holstein
where 25.000 work places are currently being transitioned to Open
Source software,
- the choice of Open Source for the government data centre in the
state of
Thuringia,
- the choice of
openDesk
in the German armed forces, nor
- the use of Linux as a desktop for
82.000
seats in the French Gendarmerie since 2008, to name only four.
We urge the French and German governments to reflect that
Open
Source is an essential enabler of digital sovereignty:
transparency and auditability enable independent security
assessments. Open Source strengthens trust in digital
infrastructure, provides independence from single vendors, and
preserves strategic autonomy in particular in critical areas.
Once more, and in the name of APELL and our partner organisations,
thank you for supporting the letter and for sharing it with your
network. Together let us establish that
digital sovereignty is
possible with Open Source – today!
Kind regards,
Sebastian Raible
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--
Sebastian Raible – Director EU Government Affairs (he/him)
APELL - The European Open Source Software Business Association
https://apell.info/
Transparency Register: 765379449482-59
sebastian.raible@apell.info