European public services that promote and actively use open source are helping to create a more dynamic technology sector. Earlier reports by the European Commisson's Open Source Observatory on France and the Basque Country in Spain show that there is a direct link between a strong government policy on open source and a healthy open source service industry.
We now have fresh numbers that back this up. In 2020, the total expected revenue for European open source companies is EUR 25 billion, or about 25% of the worldwide open source market. The number of jobs in Europe related to open source will increase to 250,000.
The estimates were made public in December by CNLL, France’s open source industry association. One important argument put forward by the trade group is that open source boosts European technological skills and expertise. Companies prove their open source experience by working closely with the open source community. This contributes to projects' sustainability.
The sustainability of open source is a key topic for the Observatory. See for example our report on Italy, where the Digital Transformation team empowered by open source and promoting an open source working culture is now a permanent part of the government.
Denmark is another source of inspiration. Here 66 of the country’s 98 municipalities are pooling their open source efforts. They are helped by a healthy community of 35 IT services providers.
Every single public service organisation can be a contributor to the sustainability of open source. Look at CERN, the European research organisation that kicked off the World Wide Web by publishing the world's first website in 1989. CERN has signed a support contract with Kopano, the Dutch/German software company that is developing what will hopefully soon be CERN's state-of-the-art mail server.
The Observatory will continue to report on public service initiatives that contribute to a sustainable open source industry. This is why we are launching a survey, aiming to collect first-hand experience and information on the factors impacting the sustainability of public sector open source communities, as well as highlighting successful or unsuccessful case studies of open source software initiatives led by the public sector. For those who participate in Fosdem, Europe's premier open source conference, taking place in Brussels on 1 and 2 February, we look forward to discussing with you the success factors for sustainable open source communities.
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