69% of organizations in Europe believe adopting open source makes them more competitive – new Linux Foundation research

New report indicates that open source adoption increases productivity, and offers opportunities for developing digital sovereignty and advancing AI projects

Released in collaboration with Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, the Linux Foundation’s latest report, Open source as Europe’s strategic advantage: trends, barriers, and priorities for the European open source community amid regulatory and geopolitical shifts, examines European attitudes, use of, and approach towards open source software (OSS). With interviews from experts, and 316 enterprises surveyed, the report signals that organizations see OSS as essential to digital sovereignty, and resilience.  

Geopolitical turbulence has catalyzed the importance of OSS for European policymakers and business leaders, who increasingly view it as the foundation for digital autonomy, competitiveness, and technological resilience. Yet the Linux Foundation’s research reveals some critical challenges for OSS. The report indicates that strategic maturity across the region remains uneven: only 34% of organizations maintain a formal OSS strategy. Furthermore, cybersecurity concerns and public policy still present barriers to OSS adoption.

However, Open source as Europe’s strategic advantage: trends, barriers, and priorities for the European open source community amid regulatory and geopolitical shifts also indicates areas of expansion, investment, and opportunity for OSS, ultimately signifying that the European OSS landscape is on the brink of transformation.

“It’s been a pleasure to collaborate with Canonical on this report,” said Hilary Carter, SVP Research at The Linux Foundation. “Our findings provide deep insights into the evolving landscape of open source in Europe, and suggest how the current widespread adoption of OSS can be translated, through strategic investments, into a blossoming ecosystem in the future. Our research emphasizes the key role open source software will play in developing digital sovereignty and resilience, as well as revealing critical challenges and opportunities for transformative growth.”

Open source as the gateway to digital sovereignty

Growing concerns about trade disputes and political changes causing a sudden and disruptive loss of services and technology have led to individuals, organizations, and governments prioritizing technological autonomy. OSS is increasingly considered key to efforts to achieve digital sovereignty and reverse dependence on a small set of vendors and proprietary technologies. 

As Philippe Ensarguet, VP of Engineering at Orange, and Board Member at Linux Foundation Europe, states in the report, “the changing geopolitical landscape has underscored the importance of open source: relying solely on vendors from specific regions could pose risks, and open source offers a way to mitigate these concerns.” Open source gives everyone the opportunity to develop, modify, and control technology at its foundation.

Widespread adoption of OSS as a pathway for innovation

OSS offers benefits that stretch beyond its role in enabling digital sovereignty. With respondents believing that OSS enables higher productivity, avoiding vendor lock-in, and lower TCO, 56% of those surveyed consider that the benefits of OSS exceed – or greatly exceed – the costs. Beyond cost-effectiveness, respondents believe OSS makes them more competitive – 75% believed OSS development leads to higher quality software, and 58% considered OSS investment in their industry would encourage innovation.

The growing adoption of OSS across the continent poses European enterprises in a strong position to reap the benefits. As the report indicates, 64% use OSS for their operating systems, 55% for cloud and container technologies, and 54% for web and application development, indicating OSS use is established across technical stacks. 

Only 42% contribute back to OSS projects: the maturity gap

Despite growing awareness of OSS benefits and adoption of OSS, over 50% of organizations contributed to OSS projects in either limited ways (20%), did not contribute (23%), or weren’t sure if they contributed (8%). Of those who did engage significantly with OSS projects, by employing full-time contributions or maintainers, 81% saw high, or very high, value in their investment. Why, then, is contribution limited?

The report suggests that the barriers preventing OSS contribution include legal and licensing concerns (31%) and fear of leaking IP (24%). These issues are linked to a broad lack of maturity in OSS strategy: 66% of organizations lack a formal open source strategy, and 78% have not implemented an open source program office (OSPO). 

OSPOs are internal teams that oversee an organization’s open source engagement. OSPOs help to ensure compliance and avoid legal risks, whilst optimizing the organization’s use of and contributions towards OSS projects. To find out more about OSPOs, as well as how to create and successfully run an OSPO in your own organization, read our guide.

33% of respondents are unsure which certifications would make them more likely to trust OSS

Supporting the findings of a 2025 IDC report on software supply chains, Open source as Europe’s strategic advantage: trends, barriers, and priorities for the European open source community amid regulatory and geopolitical shifts suggests a concerning lack of understanding of how best to comply with cybersecurity regulations and standards. However, a prior report from the Linux Foundation indicates that organizations with higher engagement levels with OSS are leading the adoption of necessary cybersecurity measures. For example, 43% of highly engaged manufacturers produced a software bill of materials (SBOM) across all their products, compared to 26% of less engaged OSS consumers. The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), which is set to be enforced by 2027, requires vendors to produce an SBOM at the request of market surveillance authorities, necessitating a significant shift in current behaviour. 

Change is happening. As Jon Seager, VP of Engineering at Canonical, suggests, “The number one thing is to understand what you are putting in your software. Thinking hard about dependencies that you add to your software, where they come from, and what your plan is to maintain them is a good first set of questions to start getting in the mindset of how to manage risk over time.” 

You can find a comprehensive breakdown of the CRA from our CISO on our blog, or find a more concise overview on our webpage. 

Public investment and policy changes

Governments in Europe are also beginning to invest more in open source. Open source as Europe’s strategic advantage: trends, barriers, and priorities for the European open source community amid regulatory and geopolitical shifts suggests high levels of support for OSS, with 31% of respondents considering such investments a key priority. The report cites the Sovereign Tech Agency (STA) in Germany as a good example, which funds the maintenance of OSS projects that it relies upon for its digital infrastructure. Likewise, the report notes the French Tech Souveraineté Fund and its work in funding European OSS projects as critical to the foundation of Probabl as a spinoff of the scikit-learn project, whose mission is the development, maintenance, and sustainability of OSS projects and communities in data science. Such examples signal that there is growing interest in the long-term sustainability of open source projects from a public policy perspective, especially in light of new AI developments. 

38% of organizations prioritize investment in open source AI

DeepSeek’s release in January of 2025 invigorated open source AI, triggering a focus on investing in building a European equivalent across business leaders and policymakers. This trend links back to the desire for digital sovereignty: 89% of respondents considered OSS the most important approach to sovereign AI, followed by open data (69%), open standards (69%), open governance (49%), open infrastructure (37%), and open hardware (20%).

Europe boasts a wide variety of talent in AI/ML innovation, including open source companies like Mistral and projects like Inspect from the UK AI Security Institute, and OpenGPT-X, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK).   

Conclusion: the state of OSS in Europe

The Linux Foundation’s report paints an exciting image of OSS in Europe: we are at a point of great potential and change, with the possibility of huge innovation, particularly in the AI/ML space. However, for enterprises, this point of transition is also important – widespread adoption must transform into strategic investment, support, and organizational maturity to capitalize on this potential. As digital sovereignty becomes a defining goal of industry and government, achieving it requires addressing the strategic gap within enterprises, encouraging shifts in legislation, and active engagement in OSS communities. 

With talent, infrastructure, and motivation already in place, open source has the potential to build lasting technological resilience in Europe.