The petitioner calls for the European Union to actively develop and implement a Linux-based operating system, termed ‘EU-Linux’, across public administrations in all EU Member States.
This initiative aims to reduce dependency on Microsoft products, ensuring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and promoting transparency, sustainability, and digital sovereignty within the EU.
The petitioner emphasizes the importance of using open-source alternatives to Microsoft 365, such as LibreOffice and Nextcloud, and suggests the adoption of the E/OS mobile operating system for government devices. The petitioner also highlights the potential for job creation in the IT sector through this initiative.
[Edit typo.]
Don’t confuse honest technical motivations with “technical motivations” here. Starting new projects to grab EU funding is a lot more profitable for the individual companies that get to take part in them. Especially when failure is an option in the end.
I’m not saying that’s the case, but I have experienced one or two EU funded project here and there that didn’t really make efforts to make the jump into a market viable product in the end.
I don’t think there’s any clear path for the petitioner here to land such a deal if the proposal was accepted, it’s just a very short petition urging development of an EU linux distro?
This is surely more about packaging of apps on top of something that exists rather than creating something new. A huge bonus would however be a way to pay open source developers working on the tools deemed necessary to include in such a distribution.
It would have to be more than that. If it’s supposed to be backed by EU there would have to be an agency responsible for it’s development and security. The moniker “EU certified” would require some sort of code evaluation and certification agency. As such it would become rather powerful.
I think it’s a good idea, the OS would give the market a focus and allow for a collected development effort without excluding anyone active today from participating. Kinda like what I think Android was, without the risk of lock-in as it would be government funded.
The big question is if this would be within the current EU mandate, though.