Actively contribute to at least one open source project under European governance or under a neutral foundation#

What this is, concretely#

This commitment consists of making an active, measurable, and lasting contribution to at least one open source project under European governance (Document Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, NLnet Labs, Codeberg, OW2, Forgejo, etc.) or under a neutral multi-vendor foundation (Linux Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, CNCF). The contribution may take four main forms: code (regular commits, PR reviews, substantive pull requests), paid maintainer hours (one or more team members have an explicit fraction of their time allocated to contributing to the project), funding (direct sponsorship, donations to the foundation, support contract), or infrastructure (hosting mirrors, test infrastructure, CI sponsorship).

The commitment insists on the “active” dimension: this is not a one-off contribution then forgotten, but regular support sustained over time. A minimum 12-month horizon is expected, with a logic of renewal.

Why this commitment matters#

The commitment is the most direct expression of thesis 8 of the manifesto: “technological autonomy rests less on licenses than on people: without a critical mass of paid maintainers keeping the critical bricks alive, free software becomes a technical debt funded by people other than us.” And of thesis 11: “a serious European digital sovereignty policy is recognised by its investment in foundations, maintainers, and distribution infrastructures.”

For a provider, active contribution has a triple benefit. It strengthens your technical mastery of the components you depend on: a paid maintainer who contributes regularly to a project knows its inner workings far better than someone who merely uses it. It gives you a voice in the project’s trajectory: a project’s roadmap is typically steered by those who contribute. And it constitutes a concrete commercial signal of your positioning on sovereignty.

For the ecosystem, your contribution enlarges the critical mass. More European maintainers on strategic projects mean more distributed governance, better European jurisdictional anchoring, and lower exposure to the unilateral decisions of a single sponsor.

A concrete example#

A French software engineering company of 75 people, developing geospatial data processing solutions for local authorities, takes this commitment in May 2026 with a 12-month horizon. Technical leadership identifies three strategic projects for the business: QGIS (GIS software, distributed governance with European dominance), PostGIS (PostgreSQL extension, distributed governance), and OpenStreetMap (open geographic data).

Three commitments are formalised. A senior developer is allocated 2 days a month to contribute to QGIS, mainly on bug fixes and ergonomic improvements raised by the company’s clients. The company signs an annual sponsorship contract with the PostGIS Project for 6,000 euros and funds the test infrastructure of a CI workflow on Codeberg. For OpenStreetMap, the company allocates one day a month to each of two contributors for cartographic contributions on its clients’ territories, and makes an annual donation of 2,000 euros to OpenStreetMap France.

By the end of the 12 months, the report is published on the technical blog: 24 PRs merged on QGIS, the PostGIS sponsorship renewed, around 3,800 cartographic edits on OSM. The company observes that contributing to QGIS has also significantly shortened the resolution time for bugs raised by its own clients.

Anti-pattern to avoid#

A single contribution at the start of the commitment without regular follow-through (one commit, then nothing) does not honour the spirit of the commitment. A contribution scattered across many small projects without strategic coherence remains superficial. An anonymous donation to a distant foundation unrelated to your activity is a worthy act but does not constitute the commitment as worded. The value lies in regularity, in coherence with your technical dependency, and in public traceability.

Success indicators#

By the 12-month horizon, you can reasonably consider this commitment fulfilled if an active contribution is documented on at least one project under European governance or under a neutral foundation, in one of the forms mentioned (code, paid hours, funding, infrastructure), with observable regularity over time. A feedback report published at the end of the first year strengthens the collective value of the commitment.

→ Documented in the dossier#

• Family 2 — Foundations and jurisdiction
• Family 4 — Contribution concentration
• Family 5 — Positive counter-examples

JSON schema category: contribution. Default horizon: 12 months. Applicable to: businesses, associations, foundations.