Europe's open source businesses took a huge step by announcing the creation of the Association Professionnelle Européenne du Logiciel Libre (APELL), a federation of open source industry associations. APELL was kick-started on 31 January by open source associations in France, Germany and Finland. Already they represent just over 500 companies, and more are expected to join in the coming months.

By creating a single voice for European open source businesses, APELL can make Europe's policymakers aware of the economic and strategic importance of the growing open source industry. Their key messages will no doubt include great economic opportunities, more jobs, and increased digital sovereignty.

The advantages of open source are clear.  They certainly are to most companies in Germany, as the Commission's Open Source Observatory reported in February: lower costs, increased security, IT vendor independence, increased choice, and access to the source code.

There is no reason why the situation should be different for public services. The companies represented by APELL are the companies that help public services implement and benefit from free and open source solutions. Their developers will contribute to the solutions shared by public services.

So, it's no wonder that Estonia says that open source is always a priority. It’s no wonder that Switzerland is letting its public services share the source code of their software solutions as open source. It’s no wonder that the German city of Dortmund is taking ambitious next steps towards using more open source.

This is also why we need to know how to nurture these competitive open source communities. This is an OSOR focus point for example, in the report on our workshop on sustainable open source communities at FOSDEM. We will also soon share the outcome of our survey on this topic.