Geographical target [4.5.7.8]

Having a strong geographical focus on the European Research Area (ERA) and its neighbours, while being open for collaboration worldwide, the EU Framework Programmes (see section <A.1.1>) can serve as an example for the new funding mechanism. Although the FOSS world is generally an international or even worldwide affair, to be eligible for funding, a FOSS project should have relevance to Europe, for example in its roots or in its developer or user community. For FOSS created or used by European public services this relevance is obvious.

Interestingly, bottom-up FOSS initiatives appear to be more often based in Europe (and Canada) than do the industrially-driven top-down foundations and business platforms.

This article is part of the research performed for the EC project 'Development of a Funding Mechanism for Sustaining Open Source Software for European Public Services' (2022).