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OFE Year in Review: 2024

03 December 2024

Author: May Janin

2024 was a year of growth, global engagement, and amplified impact for OFE. It was also a year that we might see as an important step in remaking how open source lives in the world and how the world will engage with open technologies as a whole.

OFE, for its part, has focused on showcasing the value of open source technologies as a driver of innovation and of a resilient economy, highlighting how open source can be a critical pillar for Europe’s digital sovereignty. Through new partnerships and increased global engagement, we led discussions on open technologies as digital fundamentals. 

The established way of doing things is in question. We will amplify the impact of open technologies in Europe and globally, as we need to realise the unique opportunity at hand to achieve more competition and user choice in the ICT market. With the new College of Commissioners recently taking up its work, digital policy recognised as critical with a Vice-President, Finland’s Henna Virkkunen, and open source increasingly seen as a lever, 2025 will be a chance to advance OFE’s mission.

Picking out a few highlights, OFE has been working on an unprecedented number of activities to realise this potential, expanding the depth and breadth of our impact. The European Open Source Awards aims to showcase European excellence in open source and how it drives competitiveness in Europe’s economy. Within the NGI framework, OFE is supporting the advancement of open technologies in a concrete and impactful manner. We hosted two landmark events overseas including the OSPOs for Good 2024 conference in New York, working in close collaboration with the UN Tech Envoy’s Office and the OpenForum Academy Symposium at the Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard in Boston. 

In Brussels, we continue to coordinate the open technologies ecosystem on EU policy efforts and the implementation of landmark legislation, such as the Cyber Resilience Act, the AI Act and the Interoperable Europe Act. Yet, the EU will not stand still, thus we are looking ahead as the revised Public Procurement Direct and the Liability Directive come into focus and new legislation, among them the EU Cloud and AI Development Act and Digital Networks Act is going to set new rules which need to recognise the value of open technologies.

We thank you for your continuous support and we are looking forward to working with you in 2025 as these important times to define the EU’s digital future. The EU Open Source Policy Summit 2025 will be the first opportunity in the early stages of the new EU legislative cycle to discuss what open source can do for Europe. 

OFE’s Events in 2024 

Amplifying our policy message in favour of open source, and open innovation for a resilient and competitive economy, OFE organised several high-level policy events throughout 2024. 

  • EU Open Source Policy Summit 2024: This year we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Summit, exploring the role of open source and Europe in the global playground. This was one of our most successful Summits yet, showing the importance of active engagement around open source by policymakers in Europe and globally. 
  • Capital Series, Belgium: Continuing to advocate for open source to be prioritised in Europe’s policy agenda, we hosted the 4th of our Capital Series event, here in Brussels. Organised under the auspices of the Belgian Presidency, the event focused on the role of EU Member States, and in particular Belgium, in realising a digitalised open Europe. Honouring Belgium’s multilingual model, this event was our first multilingual conference with panels in English, French, and Flemish. 
  • OFE Lounge 2024: In the first half of the year we organised our OFE Lounge 2024 webinar series, under the umbrella of the StandICT.eu2026 project. Bridging standardisation and open source expertise to discuss the dynamics of software development and ICT standardisation, we organised 5 online sessions focused on a specific aspect of standardisation and open source, including the AI Act and the CRA. 
  • OSPOs for Good 2024: For our first overseas event, OFE co-organised the OSPOs for Good Symposium, in collaboration with the UN Tech Envoy’s Office. This event took place during New York’s first open source week, throughout which OFE took part in several events in partnership with Eclipse Foundation and the Digital Public Goods Alliance, as well as in the “What’s Next for Open Source” workshops co-organised by the Linux Foundation, OSPO++, and the Apache Software Foundation. 
  • OFE Housewarming party: On 12 September, to celebrate our move to a new office next to the European Commission in Brussels, we hosted a housewarming party. This was the occasion to reconnect with supporters here in Brussels and to discuss open source policy in the new EU legislature in an informal setting. Following the success of this event, we will be hosting another open house party in the spring.
  • OpenForum Academy Symposium 2024: On 13-14 November we held our third OFA Symposium, hosted at the Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard. Over the two days of the Symposium, we discussed the socio-political and economic dimensions of open source technologies with global experts, connecting academics with practitioners. On this occasion, we presented the 2nd Basil Cousin Award to Jennifer Tridgell, a young, promising academic researching the societal effects of open innovation and open technologies.

 

OFE’s Achievements in 2024 

  • We are participating in the OSAwards.eu initiative to launch European Open Source Academy & Awards. This ambitious project funded by the European Commission to celebrate European excellence in open source technologies, showcasing its critical value  for Europe’s economy. The inaugural ceremony of the Awards, and launch of the Academy, will be held in Brussels on 30 January 2025, on the eve of the European Open Source Policy Summit. 
  • We launched the EU Open Source Week, as part of the OSAwards.eu project. This platform facilitates access to events taking place around FOSDEM and the EU Open Source Policy Summit, and is designed to further bridge the technical and policy realms on open source and digital policies. If you are organising an event on EU digital policy and open source in late January / early February 2025, you can add it to the EU Open Source Week platform. 
  • OFE joined the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), championing European values and connecting experiences from Europe with global conversations on sustainable and reusable digital public goods. 
  • OFE welcomed two new supporters at the start of the year with Mozilla and the Matrix.org Foundation. We are delighted to have these two organisations at the forefront of open source expertise and secure communication joining us in our network for open source public policy dialogues in the EU. 
  • OFE joined the consortium facilitating the NGI0 Commons project, a coalition of organisations funding and supporting technological development for the Next Generation Internet initiative (funded by the European Commission). The NGI0 Commons Fund will provide over €21 million in grants to open source technologies projects between 2024 and 2027. 
  • OFE joined NGI Commons, a Coordination and Support Action (CSA) funded by the European Commission for the long-term strategy of digital commons in Europe. OFE leads community engagement with digital commons projects across Europe and will develop a mapping of funding and support mechanisms available to the Commons in the Union. Marking the launch of this project, was the first NGI Commons workshop, held in June in Amsterdam. 
  • OFE’s team and expertise grew as we welcomed four new team members, including three Policy Advisors, and launched our first internship programme. With this growth, we expanded our expertise for engaging with all critical conversations around digital policy and open technologies, in Europe and globally. 

Focus on: Our Policy Engagement 

While OFE worked directly on at least EU legislative files this year (see list at end), the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is probably the one that generated the most discussion among experts and the AI Act probably generated the most discussion in the broader general media. Through this work, we worked on: 

  • Assisting coordination of policy work in the FOSS ecosystem through the FOSS Community LIst and fortnightly online meetings. This coordination work is continuously expanding with less visible structures we are building. If you know of an organisation interested in the EU policy files, do not hesitate to put them in contact with us. 
  • Joined the European Commission Working Groups of the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, which will detail the AI Act rules for AI providers to facilitate the implementation of the Act. OFE has joined the working groups (1) Transparency and copyright-related rules, and (2) Risk identification and assessment. 
  • Continued to work on the EU legislative files: the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), AI Act, Product Liability Directive (PLD), Interoperable Europe Act, Data Act, Digital Markets Act (DMA), Digital Services Act, Standard Essential Patents Regulation, the chat control legislation and the review of the standards regulation 1025.
  • We provided input on the recast of the 1025 standardisation regulation and continued to lead work on standards through the OFE standards Task – which convenes leading European standardisation and open source experts, to engage actively with the Commission’s Multi-Stakeholder Platform for ICT Standardisation and to contribute to European Commission’s consultations.

We also continued to provide its Public Policy Review (PPR) as a service, offering subscribers a monthly review of European digital policy and the implications for open source. If you are interested in learning more about our PPR service, you can reach out at info@openforumeurope.org

Focus on: Our EU Projects

  • The Allpros.eu consortium, of which OFE is part of, published its Blueprint Report: Bridging the Skill Gap in the Semiconductor sector. The report gathers insights from the Allpros.eu’s thematic working group on Skills and outlines recommendations for expanding the talent pool for the semiconductor sector in Europe. 
  • OSOR, the Open Source Observatory, published a report analysing progress and trends on open source policies across 15 countries (European and non-European). The report highlights how the adoption of open source enhances digital sovereignty and offers valuable insights into the value of open source technologies for the public sector. 
  • OSOR also published the OSOR Handbook, a guide tailored to the open source community within the public sector offering European public administrations insights into the development and implementation of open source software (OSS) strategy. 

OFE On Tour 

In 2024, we continued to travel around Europe, but also the US and East Asia, to discuss open source policy and the merits of the openness principles. We thank all the organisers who have created opportunities for vibrant open source discussions. 

Here are the events where our team was invited to speak or to support sessions: 

Thank you for reflecting on this journey of growth and impact. We are grateful for our ever-expanding network of friends and partners across the public and private sectors, in Europe and globally. As we look back on the impact we had throughout 2024, we will continue speaking in favour of open source driven innovation and policy frameworks. We hope to continue engaging with all of you in this work in 2025.