The world should wake up from tech dependence. Let the EU massively invest in FOSS.
Edit: as raised by comments, my title was not incorrect but did omit that it’s actually the US that imposed sanctions, to which MS chose to comply. Changed the title.
I would consider it a privilege to live long enough to see the EU invest in and adopt FOSS software as a matter of national security.
Like all things FOSS & Libre, when a place as large as Europe benefits from the investment, so too do all of us benefit in kind.
It is the natural order of things; programmers love to program so much that they will do it for free, independent of any profit motive. We only see programmers charging money for their work because you basically need to sell something to survive in our Bootstrappist hellscape. Improving material conditions wouldn’t just make life better for everyone, it would also result in better, newer software, delivered faster.
It doesn’t even need to be for free. Public institutions could still buy software under the condition that it is open sourced immediately, so they don’t become dependent on the vendor.
That would be so beautiful.
It’s already happening, slowly