Strategic Open Source in Industrial Digital Ecosystems

Facing global competition, climate challenges, and increasing cybersecurity risks, industrial companies are under growing pressure to digitize securely and quickly. As these problems exceed the capabilities of individual companies, cross-organizational collaboration in digital ecosystems is essential. Open-source software (OSS) has become a strategic lever for accelerating innovation, strengthening interoperability, reducing vendor lock-in, and advancing digital sovereignty. This white paper positions OSS as a strategic tool for industrial digital ecosystems. It summarizes the benefits of strategic OSS for OT/IT convergence, lifecycle support, and interoperability, as well as efficiency gains through collaborative development and improved security. A deliberate OSS strategy and management mitigates compliance, security, and dependency risks and provides actionable guidance for software developers. A case study the implementation of their OSS linked to corporate values. The paper calls on European industry to invest in OSS capabilities and ecosystem building to reap collective and individual business benefits. The future holds intensified IT/OT integration, regulatory impacts debates around open source AI, which call for a structured approach towards OSS.