do your own homework

For a politician, taking a path which deviates considerably from what people are used too is a hard sell for them to convince the voters that this is a better path. In the 80's and 90's, there was the saying that "You'll never get fired for choosing IBM". Today, that has changed to the Big Tech companies mentioned above.

There are quite few FOSS based companies who are strong enough to compete against the lobby capabilities of the large Big Tech companies. Red Hat/IBM is probably the largest one these days. And IBM most likely pushes that "responsibility" to Red Hat. But there is only so much Red Hat can do alone without support from others as well.

No software is free (gratis). Someone need to spend time developing it and maintaining it. So funding is clearly important. Politicians understands this. That's why large FOSS based companies are crucial to be involved in these discussions with the EU. Because these companies can at least provide some more credible numbers to EU politicians of the cost of running a FOSS software stack.

And another related aspect, which Big Tech can push hard on is the support side. Getting an software stack infrastructure up and running is just one piece of the puzzle. Having a sustainable and reliable support channel when something breaks must also be considered.

For example, Microsoft provides an enormous software stack - going from the OS to the core software components politicians need to do their work, and there is a lot of expertise they can offer if something breaks. Microsoft can give the politicians a concrete number of the cost of using that stack. (Whether these numbers are correct in practice, is a different discussion).

For FOSS, you need companies like Red Hat to provide a similar number - because no politician will start digging into all the various components needed for them to be able to do their job and calculate a cost spread across thousands of open source projects and then figure out the expertise need for the maintenance and support. That won't fly well, and they won't really task this to their expertise groups if they don't initially believe it's worthwhile.

And I think that's why FOSS struggles to get a strong foothold within the public sector. Those few companies who can provide a functional "solution package" based on FOSS are drowning in the lobby efforts of the large Big Tech companies. And then the cost of a FOSS solution is not seen as credible by politicians.

Politicians need to be given a simple, clear and convincing answer to their complex need with a clear price tag.

In that regards, the current world political situation is shaking the cage enough for politicians to actually look at alternatives - due to the way the Trump 2 administration operates - it is clearer that depending too much on the US based Big Tech is making it too risky for EU in a longer run, Europe gets in a vulnerable position. That is what EU politicians begins to realize now.

The paradox is that Red Hat is a US based company owned by IBM, which gives Red Hat a huge downside to their credibility against the other US based Big Tech companies. On the other hand, what Red Hat brings to the table is a software stack not really owned by them, but is more a collection of independent open source software projects. So if shit its the fan for Red Hat in the future, it is possible to escape a vendor hostage situation. For FOSS companies in Europe, this might be a golden opportunity - but it will be hard to compete against a de-facto FOSS company as Red Hat has become over many years. It is not impossible though, by putting efforts into following what Red Hat delivers today and the direction they're taking - to shadow that for a bit and build up expertise and credibility for the future.

Organizations like FSF, Software Freedom Conservancy and similar FOSS advocates only provides a guidance to where too look and why to consider FOSS from an angle which doesn't really provide a "software stack with a price tag" answer to politicians. These organizations provides more to the philosophical aspects to the discussions rather than a concrete software stack solution.

Politicians won't start throwing money at FOSS projects unless they see a clear win in it. The FOSS projects themselves are not unified in a way where they can convince politicians that they have the best option for them. They need someone in front of them who can handle the business politics and provide a unified solution across all the needed projects. And this organization can start sponsoring concrete FOSS projects.