Why isn't the German administration procuring more FOSS?
summary
German procurement uses EVB-IT model contracts (about 12–13 templates) that presume proprietary exclusivity, forcing costly manual edits that push many SMEs out of tenders; a survey of the Open Source Business Alliance membership (≈200 members) finds this reduces competition and creates legal uncertainty. Licenses (OSI list ≈116) and mixed-license components in modern software add fear; proposed fixes are Ministry of the Interior contract rewrites following 2022 workshops with Bitkom and the Alliance, an abstract whitelist of acceptable license conditions (e.g. GPLv2-style terms), and a required SBOM requirement in two formats for supply and security.
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chapters (20)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:55Connection between FOSS and digital sovereignty
- 3:09How does the procurement process work
- 4:27Problems with the procurement process
- 5:40The rights of use
- 7:26Standardized model contracts
- 13:40Why is the German administration worried
- 16:19Software
- 17:35Review
- 17:59Model contracts
- 19:20License whitelist
- 20:23Software builds of material
- 23:31Contact
- 23:42Exclusivity
- 24:48Procurement
- 26:26Writing the tender
- 27:41License Arguments
- 28:56Can it work in Germany
- 29:56Open Source is not a product
- 31:44Enterprise solutions
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