On Mon, Aug 31, 2026 at 5:50 AM Dimitar Zagorski via Publicpolicy < [email protected]> wrote:
> === Digital Omnibus === > > On saving standard licences for open government data, we are pleased to > report that our amendments are all in > <https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CJ72-AM-791072_EN.pdf>. > The amendments would delete the provision introducing actor-specific > differentiated licensing, restore the original language encouraging > standard licences, and fix the term of exclusive digitisation agreements. > This is the issue we flagged earlier this year alongside Communia, > Creative Commons,and many, many others > <https://communia-association.org/2026/07/06/open-letter-protect-open-standard-licences-for-public-sector-information/>. > We will be reaching out to ask for your support as the compromise process > gets underway. > This is excellent news! Congrats. === CADA Proposal === > > The Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) > <https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/communication-european-tech-sovereignty-accompanied-eu-open-source-strategy> > is the Commission's proposal to create a sovereignty framework for public > procurement of cloud and AI services, with four assurance levels depending > on how sensitive the use case is. It is not a priority file for us — its > focus is on cloud infrastructure procurement, not open knowledge platforms. > However, one provision is worth flagging: to reach the highest sovereignty > tier (level 4), providers must demonstrate that no entity established > outside the EU holds effective control over the software components they > use.This is probably impossible for MediaWiki or any other open source > project to fulfill. In practice that could mean that MediaWiki could not be > procured for military and intelligence applications as well as nuclear > facilities. A real shame! But the question about “effective control” and > open source software should be seriously discussed during negotiations. > I assume that, like CRA, this will have to get fixed. There’s literally zero chance that the EU can build digital sovereignty of any footprint without open source, which in practice (for small things like “operating systems” and “browsers” and “programming languages”) that there’s often an effective controller in the US. The test will have to be, as always, the four freedoms: can the EU effectively *fork* and *run* without a non-EU veto. That may require development of expertise that the EU often lacks, but is guaranteed by the licenses. >
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