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Afaik both countries have tax incentives for R&D already. What the EU needs is :

- a proper vision

- the balls to implement it, even if that means booting lobbyists off and annoying the US

We have OVH, Hetzner, Infomaniak, Proton, Nextcloud, and plenty of smaller companies, some heavily invested in open source. There's also a mechanism to fund flagship projects with billions.

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I agree. I'd love to see European institutions to begin using European software and infrastructure. I feel like we have lots of puzzle pieces already, I'd add ONLYOFFICE to the mix, which would be very important to replace Google Drive / Docs / Sheets or Microsoft 365. They even have a free personal tier to test the waters.

You might be interested in the "Public Money, Public Code" campaign of the Free Software Foundation in Europe (FSFE).

https://publiccode.eu/

In my experience with government organizations, the argument that public tax money should be used for public/free re-usable software instead of funding proprietary development (essentially subsidizing R&D of foreign corporations), really strikes a nerve on all administrative levels.

I fully agree with the campaign. I even donated to them some time ago and got a nice package of promotion material in return.

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