APELL (Association Professionnelle Européenne du Logiciel Libre) is Europe's Open Source Business Association founded in 2020 to bring together national Open Source organizations. It aims to provide peer support, collective marketing, capacity building and policy support for its members. While the European Commission sees Open Source as important for digital sovereignty, adoption varies by country. APELL seeks to foster cooperation among European Open Source companies and associations, promote the industry to policymakers, and connect companies to pursue mergers and acquisitions.

1. European co-operation and APELL
Timo Väliharju
Member of the Management Board, APELL
www.apell.info

2. What is APELL?
APELL (Association Professionnelle
Européenne du Logiciel Libre) is
Europe’s Open Source Business
Association.
Founded in 2020 to bring national
Open Source Software (‘OSS’)
organisations together into a
European network to provide them
with peer support and collective
marketing, as well as capacity building
and policy support for public affairs,
both nationally and on the EU-level.

3. ASSOCIATION VALUES
www.apell.info
Trustworthiness and
transparency
We will be open, honest and
ethical in all we do.
Respect and
democracy
We respect one another’s
differences and contributions.
Sustainability
We will make best use of our resources to bring
about changes that produce permanent
benefits for our members and society, and will
plan our activities to ensure APELL’s future.

4. www.apell.info
European Open Source situation
● European commission sees Open Source important part of digital sovereignty
● Situation in member states varies a lot
○ In some countries governments sees Open Source as a high priority in business and public ICT (e.g. France,
Germany) and in some countries not so much (e.g. Finland, Denmark)
○ Public organizations are more open to Open Source than political level
● Path seems to be towards Open Source and the speed is growing
● Industry is just developing though majority of software companies are using Open Source as a
part of the products and services
● In some area a clear lack of Open Source software (e.g. health and hospital management)

5. www.apell.info
What is Open Source industry in Europe?
● A lot of small companies with national focus
● Some have narrow product/ service focus, but also some integrators are emerging (generally
doing Open Source)
● If Open Source company’s turnover is over 10 MEUR it is regarded as a big open source
company
● Not so many companies that operates in European level
● Impact of the Open Source to European economy is 65-95 billion euros
● A lot of economical impact comes from embedded systems and cloud services
● In short: The European Open Source industry is fragmented in many ways

6. www.apell.info
What should we do as APELL?
● Create opportunities for European Open Source industry executives and founders to meet and
discuss (Strasbourg 2022 and Tampere 2023)
● Cooperation as European level European Open Source associations (industry lobbying with in
member countries to governments and policy makers etc.)
● Working with European Commission (OSPO) and with national OSPO’s
● Promoting possibilities to company mergers and acquisitions in European Open Source
industry
● Working with educational institutions to create awareness of Open Source business models and
community development etc.

7. www.apell.info
Questions?