Open-source licences [4.5.7.7]

Almost all existing funding mechanisms for FOSS require the resulting source code to be published under an open-source licence "officiallyhttps://opensource.org/faq#avoid-unapproved-licenses recognised as such by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).https://opensource.org/licenses/category While this is a good starting point, we have found that the current open-source licensing landscape is an important factor in the sustainability issues many FOSS projects are experiencing. In Chapter <7> we elaborate on what we identified as one of the root causes of this problem and present several new open-source licensing paradigms, which do not meet OSI's Open Source Definition.

Since reciprocity is key to the sustainability of FOSS (as discussed in section <7.1>) and copyleft (i.e. reciprocal) licensing types are a good match for govtech software (as discussed in section <7.1.8>), using a copyleft or other reciprocal licence type could be a requirement for funding under this new mechanism.Note that this does not necessary apply to publicly funding other types of software. For example, making the software created under the EU Framework Programmes available for the widest possible use under a permissive licence (i.e. making as much as possible of its user rights available to anyone) may be the best choice from a industrial-political point of view. In this case government takes a similar role as a science/industry consortium providing a common foundation for others to build on (as discussed section <7.1.8>).

This is especially relevant to the European Commission as the creator and maintainer of the European Union Public Licence (EUPL).https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/custom-page/attachment/eupl_v1.2_en.pdfhttps://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/eupl-guidelines-faq-infographics Also relevant in this regard is the fact that the EUPL cannot be used for FOSH.interview with RISC-V community member for the OSOR project

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).