Let’s start the conversation

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An open discussion about OSS took place during the hackathon, kicked off by Sebastian Bergmann’s keynote “May the source be with EU”.

Participants shared their experience maintaining open source projects, and the multiple challenges they are facing.

The discussion evolved around the “Gratis vs libre” distinction, and the difficulties encountered by OSS maintainers in making their projects sustainable.

It can indeed be challenging to create a business and sell services around OSS when there is a persistent expectation that “open source” means “free” (as in beer).

Also, maintaining an open source project that is widely used means responsibility. People rely on the software to “just work”, but are reluctant to pay for open source software.

Organisations also expect support, a legal entity, a contact person, a Service Level Agreement, from the software vendor.

OSS developers needs compensation, legal protection, tax benefits, …

These topics, among others, will be debated during the “Workshop about the future of Open Source Software and Open Source Hardware” organised by the European Commission.