We need a European Sovereign Tech Fund (GitHub blog)

[Posted July 30, 2025 by jzb]

GitHub director of developer policy, Felix Reda, has published a blog post about a GitHub-commissioned study by Open Forum Europe, Fraunhofer ISI and the European University Institute. The study finds, not surprisingly, "a profound mismatch between the importance of open source maintenance and the public attention it receives"; it calls for a European sovereign tech fund (STF) modeled after Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency.

The study proposes two alternative institutional setups for the EU-STF: either the creation of a centralized EU institution (the moonshot model), or a consortium of EU member states that provide the initial funding and apply for additional resources from the EU budget (the pragmatic model). In both cases, to make the fund a success, the minimum contribution from the upcoming EU multiannual budget should be no less than €350 million. This would not be enough to meet the open source maintenance need, but it could form the basis for leveraging industry and national government co-financing that would make a lasting impact.

The European Union is currently starting negotiations for its 2028-2034 budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework; GitHub and others hope to persuade EU legislators to include a European STF in that framework.

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 30, 2025 21:02 UTC (Wed) by mnohime (subscriber, #174134) [Link] (25 responses)

What's in it for GitHub? Why does an American company promote it?

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 30, 2025 21:11 UTC (Wed) by skissane (subscriber, #38675) [Link]

Multinational companies have staff and managers from around the world - Felix Reda is German and a former MEP - and EU staff are sometimes going to speak up for what they believe is in the interests of the EU - and the question for US headquarters is-“what are the potential benefits and costs of this proposal to us as a company, both in publicly backing it, and if it were actually implemented?” Benefits: the proposal makes the company sound mature, thoughtful, making it likely wins political capital in Europe and is positive PR. If implemented, some of that money spent on open source maintenance is going to become GitHub revenue. Costs: none significant. So why wouldn’t GitHub’s executive management support this?

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 30, 2025 21:17 UTC (Wed) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (18 responses)

A European Sovereign Tech Fund should start by funding an alternative to github that is not dependent on Microsoft.

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 1:46 UTC (Thu) by gerdesj (subscriber, #5446) [Link] (10 responses)

" A European Sovereign Tech Fund should start by funding an alternative to github that is not dependent on Microsoft."

Should ... something ... something EU .... it even be Git based? The ultimate irony is that git is not a centralized thingie at all. Mr T created it for Linux development and that's it.

github managed to create a weird centralized form of git and MS bought it and now we are where we are!

OK, perhaps git is good enough for us all. Perhaps git.co.eu and obviously we'll (UK) run up git.co.uk, will do the job.

Will they work? Yes, if github is required to scan and include the EU content as if it is local (with some disclaimers, perhaps)

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 5:52 UTC (Thu) by ebee_matteo (subscriber, #165284) [Link] (8 responses)

There are several git forges around which are open source. Forgejo (and its instance at Codeberg) are good examples.

Gitlab can also be run on premises, even though not entirely open source.

I think the EU is more interested in making sure critical infrastructure is decoupled from the US on a cloud level and in terms of where the sensitive data of citizens is stored and processed.

And promote European startups. Since there are no big European tech companies except SAP, it is easier for EU startups to innovate and close the gap by building on top of open source software that growing to the size of US tech companies that have a huge lead. The EU ecosystem is much more dependent on a lot of small companies rather than a few big corporations, and as such a fund in this direction boosts the economy.

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 9:28 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (7 responses)

And promote European startups. Since there are no big European tech companies except SAP, it is easier for EU startups to innovate and close the gap by building on top of open source software that growing to the size of US tech companies that have a huge lead.

The problem here is that any European startups that look halfway interesting and innovative are likely to be acquired by US tech giants before they “close the gap”. There are no big tech companies in Europe (other than SAP) which would be able to offer the same sheer amount of €€€, and even a hypothetical sovereign tech fund would find it difficult to compete – while a billion dollars here or there makes no difference to the likes of Meta or Microsoft.

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 10:07 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

That, or simply out-competed (predatory pricing etc etc).

There used to be a lovely CD shop on the web called PastelBlue. Then it became COW (Cheap Or What). But then Amazon started selling anything and everything (including CDs) ...

Cheers,
Wol

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 13:33 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (5 responses)

Well, in these days of Trump's "let's rip up the rules of global trade", the EU can start restricting the tech giants from acquiring European companies and can impose a digital services tax. What's the US going to do? Threaten tariffs, LOL?

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 14:33 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

And if transatlantic cables mysteriously break, causing internet congestion, we can always plausibly blame the Russians :-)

Cheers,
Wol

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 15:06 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (3 responses)

What's the US going to do? Threaten tariffs, LOL?

I think the big stick these days is basically threatening to withdraw from NATO or, at least, abandoning the idea of a definite commitment to the military defense of Europe against Russia should that be needed.

The problem here is less a full-out 1980s-style war than, say, the occupation of a small place on the fringes of the EU/NATO such as (part of) Estonia, which Putin might be tempted to try just to test the waters.

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 15:48 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> The problem here is less a full-out 1980s-style war than, say, the occupation of a small place on the fringes of the EU/NATO such as (part of) Estonia, which Putin might be tempted to try just to test the waters.

After all, it's only a "war" if Estonia (and/or the rest of the EU) has the audacity to defend its territory.

Why GitHub?

Posted Aug 6, 2025 8:42 UTC (Wed) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link] (1 responses)

"What's the US going to do? Threaten tariffs, LOL?"

The biggest issue is ASML, it has over 5000 suppliers in over 100 countries, including some very important ones in the US.

Why GitHub?

Posted Aug 6, 2025 14:13 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

The entire semiconductor industry, upon which the US is very heavily dependent, relies on AMSL. Trying to harm AMSL would be a massive own-goal.

Why GitHub?

Posted Aug 1, 2025 18:38 UTC (Fri) by simlo (guest, #10866) [Link]

We ought switch to https://radicle.xyz/. You can probably push it to GitHub to get free storage and publication of your project, but have all topics in git itself to avoid lock-in.

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 4:59 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (6 responses)

The only sovereign code hosting is self-hosting, folks should just switch to that instead.

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 21:32 UTC (Thu) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (5 responses)

Exactly! The EU tech fund could contribute to make self-hosting easier.

Self-hosting barriers?

Posted Aug 1, 2025 1:38 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (4 responses)

How would you do that? For self-hosting it seems that what is needed isn't funding, but that regulation of ISPs would be the main thing that could improve the ability to self-host, at least for HTTP based services. Something like moving to fibre, router freedom, no charges for static IPs, require support for customer-owned ASNs, BGP etc. Once you have all those things, port forwarding to any computer with any of the git tools in a docker container should be good enough for many folks?

https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/

Self-hosting barriers?

Posted Aug 1, 2025 4:24 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

I don't think static IPs are an issue with self-hosting. You can get them from most ISPs as a paid option.

The main complexity is in setting infrastructure in such a way that it won't need a lot of constant tinkering. HomeAssistant is a great example of such a product.

Self-hosting barriers?

Posted Aug 7, 2025 13:46 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

NextCloud seems an example too, although I haven't used it to confirm. The destruction of Cobalt by infighting at Sun is something I still think about, how things could be different if people started their Internet experience with self-hosted mail/web/filesharing or more small business was self-hosted such that expertise was more widely distributed. Would that have resulted in a slow-down of consolidation and big tech hosting, social media, if the Internet was more anarchic/democratic and less centralized/hierarchical?

Maybe the fact that no other startup picked up the pieces that Cobalt put together and made their own self-hosting appliance means that the idea didn't actually have as much weight behind it as I'd like, but it seemed relatively popular at the time, so it feels like it could have kick-started an ecosystem that would have changed the development of the Internet.

Self-hosting barriers?

Posted Aug 7, 2025 14:07 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

I remember when appliances were all the rage, in the late 90s-early 2000s. But most people and companies don't particularly like being responsible for hardware, and most software providers like recurring revenue. Both of those things conspired to move people onto the cloud.

I self-host everything, but not all of it at my house. I have a couple of cheap KVM instances at hosting providers; these are my public-facing machines. And the hosting providers have backup power, DDoS countermeasures, etc. that would be far too expensive/difficult for me to provide.

Then I run my actual IMAP server, phone system, etc. at home. These services are accessible only on my LAN or over a VPN.

But you have to have a certain tinkering mindset to want to do this stuff. I enjoy it, but most people probably don't. 🙂

Self-hosting barriers?

Posted Aug 6, 2025 8:44 UTC (Wed) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]

Strictly speaking fully Self-hosting isn't needed to leave Github and dependence on US companies, you can just use any webserver at a hosting provider in the EU, it's probably like 3 bucks a month or something like that.

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 7:11 UTC (Thu) by 0x0000 (guest, #103526) [Link]

For one: microsoft hosts a bunch of OSS on GitHub for free, where these projects use all sorts of resources (storage, compute, etc).
They get this for free is because a lot of OSS is not funded. So there's not even a point in asking those projects for money because they simply don't have it. But these resources cost github money, regardless.
It was beneficial for github to offer this 'free' service to OSS because it facilitated their tipping point, their clout, their user base, it turned github into a social network. This is step 1 of the enshittification: make life nice for your users.

But when OSS projects get funding through this ESTF, then microsoft can go to those projects and state "you have money now, you should pay for your github usage ...or else...". This threat would not be a vacuous one, because while a project could easily move its code (git clone && git remote add && git push new-remote), moving its operations, its issues, its community, its CI/CD, is a much, much, much harder task. These projects will suddenly realize that github turned a decentralized source code control system, into a centralized prison.
Given how thinly stretched many OSS projects are, I would venture to guess that they will probably deprioritize moving away from github and pay to get rid of the nagging for money by github's owner.

I don't think this is about funding OSS. I think this is about microsoft finding new ways to get other people's money. They didn't even bother with step 2 of enshittification, and went straight to step 3 ("your money is mine"), albeit in a veiled manner.

Call me cynical... but then I've been around, so there's that...

All that being said, I think a ESTF as such is a good idea; maintainers and other contributors deserve to be compensated for their efforts. They do a massive amount of thankless work. The unintended consequence of this will - I fear - probably be that maintainers will continue to be uncompensated for their efforts because the money will go to github (for those hosted there) and whichever other what-will-be-a-previously-free code hosting service instead of to the maintainers and contributors.

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 8:37 UTC (Thu) by epeeist_pitlochry (guest, #156764) [Link]

It isn't just GitHub of course, there is an amount of disquiet in Europe about a certain person who is effectively demanding money with menaces unless countries do as he tells them (look at the latest attack on Brazil's government and judiciary as an example - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/31/trump-adm...)

SUSE has launched an initiative to provide support for technology and infrastructure in Europe - https://www.zdnet.com/article/suse-launches-new-european-...

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 11:27 UTC (Thu) by lunaryorn (subscriber, #111088) [Link]

Make the EU pay maintenance costs of core open source based infrastructure so that big tech makes even more profit?

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 11:37 UTC (Thu) by zoobab (guest, #9945) [Link] (1 responses)

Because (american) companies buy influence.

Members of the European Parliament become lobbyists for american companies once they are not reelected.

In the light of the latest EU-US bad trade deal, I propose a général boycott of all american products and services, starting by Microsoft and Github.

Why GitHub?

Posted Jul 31, 2025 11:42 UTC (Thu) by epeeist_pitlochry (guest, #156764) [Link]

You might want to unplug Trump - https://www.kuketz-blog.de/unplugtrump-free-yourself-digi...

Re: We need a European Sovereign Tech Fund

Posted Jul 31, 2025 8:49 UTC (Thu) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link] (1 responses)

I suggest we finance that by fixing our tax laws so that Microsoft (and their ilk) pays their fair share of taxes.

Select "microsoft tax avoidance" search results:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/03/microsoft-i...
https://www.epsu.org/article/gaming-global-taxes-new-repo...
https://thefactcoalition.org/what-the-microsoft-tax-case-...

Re: We need a European Sovereign Tech Fund

Posted Jul 31, 2025 11:29 UTC (Thu) by lunaryorn (subscriber, #111088) [Link]

Let's tax big tech to publicly fund independent free software.