A view of the main room for the OFA Symposium 2024.

The OpenForum Academy (OFA) Symposium 2024 took place on November 13-14 in Boston, Massachusetts! Our new Materials page on the Symposium website includes papers and presentations from the various speakers, as well as photos from the event. Recordings will be published on our YouTube channel as soon as they are ready.

This unique conference underscored for us the critical importance of collaboration, innovation, and inclusivity in shaping open technologies research. This year’s edition was diverse and multidisciplinary, bringing together a mix of academics and practitioners from across the globe to share their latest research and insights on open source software and open technologies. With twice the number of presentations and a significant number more attendees compared to the previous edition, the Symposium was, we believe, a milestone for the open source research community.

So, what actually happened in Boston? And how did we get here in the first place?

A brief history of the OFA Symposium

The OFA Symposium was started in 2021 as an opportunity for OFE to host critical and scholarly discourse on open source. It was facilitated as an extension of the OpenForum Academy, our community of open source and open technologies researchers, who work globally as both academic and practitioners.

The 2021 edition of the OFA Symposium started online, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The OFA Symposium 2021 discussion centred on the European Commission study on “The impact of Open Source Software and Hardware on technological independence, competitiveness and innovation in the EU economy”. It aimed to provide researchers in the field a chance to exchange on the latest open source research, identify research gaps, and contextualise their research with the findings from the European Commission study.

Since last year, we have begun scaling the OFA Symposium, building it out into a dedicated multidisciplinary conference for academics and practitioners interested in the social, political, and economic impacts of open source. The 2023 edition of the OFA Symposium was held at TU Berlin and welcomed over 60 researchers to Berlin to investigate a future agenda for open source research. And just last month, the 2024 edition was hosted by the Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard, evolving our concept further and raising the ambition level.

Recapping the OFA Symposium 2024

Under the theme Open Source in the Global Digital Economy, the OFA Symposium 2024 examined how open source is changing the way we work, communicate, and interact with each other, and how it is shaping the future of technology and society, in the context of a globalized digital economy.

The 2024 edition of the OFA Symposium took place last month in Boston, November 13-14.

It was a truly global event which welcomed over 90 participants and speakers from over 30 different countries across the globe. Over two days, the Symposium featured the generous and thoughtful contributions of nearly 35 paper presenters, keynotes, and panel participants. We greatly enjoyed the interesting conversations we had with all the attendees and we are excited and humbled for all the input we received for future OpenForum Academy activities.

We’d like to extend our sincere gratitude to our Harvard University partners at the Digital Data Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard, who facilitated our use of the space at Batten Hall and supported the logistics. We would also like to express our thanks to our academic partners: Harvard Business School, Carnegie Mellon University, Technische Universität Berlin, the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, and FGV Direito Rio.

Exciting keynote speakers and guests

The Symposium featured the distinguished contributions of four keynote speakers, two of which kicked off Days 1 and 2 of the event, and the others which kicked off each afternoon with a Fireside Chat.

Dr. Henry Chesbrough, the ‘Father of Open Innovation’, gave a remote keynote as part of a Fireside Chat with Clare Dillon on Day 1.

On Day 1, we were thrilled to feature Brian Fitzgerald, the Director of Lero – the Irish Software Research Centre and a Professor Emeritus at the University of Limerick, who discussed the history and power of open technologies, laying the foundation for how we got to where we are in their study. We also had a discussion with Henry Chesbrough, Professor and Director of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation at UC Berkeley Haas, who discussed the past and future of the study of open innovation – a topic he himself helped to pioneer – in conversation with Clare Dillon.

On Day 2, we showcased the work of Katharina Meyer, the Director of the Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund, who surveyed her considerations from funding research related to open technologies and open infrastructures. OFE’s own Policy Advisor Nick Gates also moderated a discussion with Frank Nagle, Assistant Professor at the Harvard Business School, who discussed his work trying to understand the economics and economic impact of open source technologies.

Key takeaways and learnings

The 2024 Symposium explored six key themes: Funding and Open Source, Diversifying Open Source, Open Source Economics, Public Sector Adoption, Open Source and AI, and Ecosystems.

In the Funding block, discussions highlighted sustaining open source software (OSS) through innovative funding models. Stephen Jacobs explored team-based funding approaches, while Brigitta Németh examined firm involvement using Mozilla’s Rust ecosystem as a case. Papers by Cailean Osborne et al. and Konstantin Vinogradov called for systemic funding solutions to reimagine OSS as vital infrastructure, with a toolkit presented by Osborne’s team and an OSS endowment proposed by Vinogradov.

In the Diversity block, presentations emphasized non-code contributions and the underrepresentation of women and minorities. Aishat Muibudeen and Hana Frluckaj et. al highlighted these gaps, while Celina Agaton explored (F)OSS’s transformative potential in local economies. Jennifer Tridgell positioned OSS as a tool for global technology equity, looking at dynamics of technology transfer.

In the Economics track, Papers examined OSS value measurement and its role in innovation. Eva Maxfield Brown et. al proposed using GitHub data for valuation, and Jara Pascual et. al promoted open innovation for learning. Others examined dynamics within OSS economics, like Matt Germonprez et. al, who analyzed OSS supply chains, and Matteo Nebbiai, who linked digital value chains to individual/organizational behavior.

In the Public Sector track, discussions focused on OSS adoption and its role in digital maturity. Johan Linåker and Sachiko Muto analyzed Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) and digital indices for OSS metrics. Eve Elie et al. examine the tDigital Public Goods (DPGs) in modernizing government, while Jan Krewer underscored Digital Commons’ potential as providers of public digital infrastructure.

In the AI track, papers explored many dynamics related to open source and AI., including the impact of AI on work and topics related to the governance of open source AI. Manuel Hoffmann et. al analyzed generative AI tools like GitHub Copilot, highlighting productivity and innovation but also ethical risks. Freyja Van den Boom warned of harmful licensing in AI-generated code. Iana Kazeeva and Ana Trisovic addressed regulatory challenges and the necessity of open AI models for scientific transparency.

In the Ecosystems track, contributions examined OSS dynamics and governance. Anne Herfurth et al. highlighted AI’s dual impact on developer productivity and autonomy, while Dawn Foster discussed licensing trends and community fragmentation. Hatta Masayuki critiqued concentrated power in OSS communities, and Ryan Ellis’ team examined the benefits and risks of OSS bug bounty programs.

For a detailed summary of the available papers and presentations, check out the new Materials page on the OFA Symposium 2024 website. Recordings will be published on our YouTube channel as soon as they are ready.

Honouring an emerging scholar with the Basil Cousins Award

We were also delighted to announce the winner of our annual winner of the Basil Cousins’ Award. In 2023, OFE and the OFA instituted the Award in memory of our co-founder, Basil Cousins, who passed away in early 2023. Basil was a pioneer in understanding the role of open technologies and open source in society, one of the reasons he started OFE.

This year’s Basil Cousins’ Award went to Jennifer Tridgell, a human rights lawyer by trade who now works as an independent legal consultant and PhD Candidate (International Law x Computer Science) at the University of Cambridge as a World Ramsay Scholar.

Basil Cousins’ Award winner Jennifer Tridgell (left) with OFE Chair Sachiko Muto.

As a PhD student and emerging open source scholar, Jennifer researches global governance of open source software, and her work for this conference focused on knowledge transfer between the Global North and the Global South, something of high relevance given the recent work we have done with the UN for OSPOs for Good 2024. By drawing attention to this under-researched issue, Jennifer has highlighted a potentially enormous contribution to the open source literature, which will only be expanded on in the years to come.

What comes next for the OFA?

The OFA is a community of academics and practitioners working on open source. While it has succeeded in engaging experts and sharing outputs year-after-year through the Symposium, we recognize that more intentional efforts will be needed to help it realise its full potential.

Attendees to the Symposium participated in collaborative brainstorming exercises wherein they contributed new ideas around funding priorities, publication and dissemination opportunities, and the need for more and better data for open source and open technologies research. These inputs will help OFE develop, introduce and eventually write a new Research Agenda – premised on the idea of Open Source Impact – to help guide the delivery of our thought leadership work.

Moving forward, we also hope to refresh the scope of the OFA, an historically informal network, into a truly collaborative community with dedicated backing, support infrastructure, and resources. The goal of the refreshed network – which we will announce in the lead up to the next Symposium – will be to generate new, multidisciplinary research that helps us to understand open source technologies and their role in our world.

While the OFA has historically maintained an emphasis on open source through the OFA Symposium, feedback has also pointed to the need for the OFA to double down its commitment to advancing scholarly research on all fields of open technologies. This initiative would be an ambitious effort to support the ongoing development and appreciation of open source software.

Join us next year!

The next edition of the OFA Symposium will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in November 2025! Stay tuned for more information. We will also share more details on the future of the OpenForum Academy in the months ahead.

The post Open Source in the Global Digital Economy: Highlights from the OFA Symposium 2024 appeared first on OpenForum Europe.

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: 

• February
  • FOSDEM 2024, Brussels, Belgium 
• March 
  • Ciarán O’Riordan on the EU’s Cyber Resiliency Act, SustainOSS Podcast
• April 
  • FSFE Legal Network, Gothenburg, Sweden 
  • Polish Open Source Day, Warsaw, Poland 
  • Czech Open Source Summit, Brno, Czechia 
• May 
  • LibrePlanet, Boston, USA
• June 
  • PublicSpaces Conference, Amsterdam, Netherlands 
  • MozFest House, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • APELL Conference, Berlin, Germany 
  • Bitkom Forum Open Source, Online 
• August
  • OpenChain’s Webinar Series, online 
• September
  • Software Freedom Day, Brussels, Belgium 
  • Linux Foundation Summit, Vienna, Austria 
  • Open Source for Business: Licensing, Investment and Business Models – ZOOOM Final Conference, Brussels, Belgium 
• October 
  • LibreOffice Conference, Luxembourg
  • Global DPI Summit, Cairo, Egypt 
  • Open Compliance Summit and AI_Dev Conference, Tokyo, Japan
• November
  • Public Domain & Open Source SW International Conference, Seoul, South Korea 
• December 
  • Open Source, Ethics & Innovation in AI – Alan Turing Way Practitioners Hub Event, London, United Kingdom 

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. 

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While open source plays a critical role in driving European innovation and competitiveness, its recognition by political and business leaders has not kept pace with it. Time has come to bring the deserved spotlight on the open source community in Europe.

OpenForum Europe is honoured to announce its participation in the establishment of the European Open Source Academy and European Open Source Awards. 

Powered by the OSAwards.eu, a new project funded by the European Union, the European Open Source Academy and Awards will celebrate European excellence in open source and put the spotlight on the critical role of open source technologies in strengthening Europe’s economy and in securing its digital future. 

The European Open Source Academy 

Modelled after the world’s most prestigious scientific academies, such as the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences which presents the Nobel prizes, the European Open Source Academy will stand as a beacon of technological infrastructure and innovation. Its core mission is to illuminate the strategic value of open source for European businesses and policymakers. 

Establishing a long-standing and sustainable institution to promote open source technologies in Europe, the Academy will embody and promote the following values: 

• Excellence: The Academy and Awards will promote excellence in the European open source field, from code contribution to business models and policy advocacy, celebrating individuals and projects that have contributed to a thriving and innovative open source community in Europe. 
• Learning: The Academy will provide an avenue to ensure a thriving open source community and build the next generation of open source contributors and innovators, through its focus on open source skills and education. With an added focus on continuous open source learning, the Academy will help close the gap between the broader open source community and the use of open source in Europe’s industrial and public sectors. 
• Sustainability: Sustainability is at the core of the establishment of the Academy. Both in the sense of establishing an enduring institution, and in the sense of ensuring that the Academy is focused on contributing to the sustainability of open source development and maintenance. Including by highlighting the importance of funding for open source, and encouraging policymakers and business leaders to invest in open source.

The European Open Source Awards 

A highlight of this new EU-funded project, and one of the main focuses of the European Open Source Academy, will be the convening of the annual European Open Source Awards. The Awards will honour European excellence in the open source field. Through this unique and prestigious annual event, the Academy will lead the European open source community in celebrating and honouring those individuals and projects who have significantly contributed to the understanding, growth, adoption, and regulation of open source software and open hardware in Europe. 

This landmark establishment represents a significant stride in recognising open source as a fundamental pillar of Europe’s competitive economy and digital future. To mark the launch of the European Open Source Awards, the inaugural ceremony will be the unique occasion to recognise leading European open source experts who have highly contributed to an innovative and impactful open source field in Europe. To celebrate these contributions, the inaugural ceremony will feature: the European Open Source Achievement Award, the Open Source Business & Impact Award, the Open Source Skills & Education Award, and the Open Source Advocacy & Awareness award. 

The inaugural ceremony will take place in the heart of the EU, in Brussels, on the evening of 30 January 2025 and will welcome open source experts alongside Europe’s policy and business leaders. 

The first laureates of the European Open Source Awards and the founding members of the European Open Source Academy, will soon be announced. Make sure to follow the Academy on social media to stay up to date and know when the first Academy cohort is  announced!

The post European Open Source Academy & Awards: Celebrating European Excellence in Open Source appeared first on OpenForum Europe.

Add your event to the EU Open Source Week Platform here. 

Amplifying open source’s policy influence 

Each February, Brussels transforms into the global nexus for open technology and digital policy discussions. Centred around FOSDEM, Europe’s largest open source conference, and OpenForum Europe’s EU Open Source Policy Summit, Europe’s landmark open source and digital policy event, the conversations happening in Brussels that week set up the stage for open technologies to lead Europe’s digital autonomy and innovation. 

Gathering hundreds of open source and digital policy experts, these events have led to a surge of workshops, meet-ups and social gatherings taking place in Brussels and providing visitors with a unique mix of learning and networking opportunities. To amplify the momentum set by FOSDEM and the EU Open Source Policy Summit, we are launching the EU Open Source Week Platform.

Facilitating access to events taking place around FOSDEM and the EU Open Source Policy Summit, this guide helps to promote and access all the open source events taking place in Brussels. Beyond serving as a directory to help you make the most of your time in Brussels, the EU Open Source Week aims to amplify the impact of FOSDEM and the EU Open Source Policy Summit on global open source conversations and European innovation. 

Through this initiative, we are uniting European and global networks, reinforcing the strategic importance of open source in Europe’s digital and industrial policies, and further bridging the technical and policy realms. The EU Open Source Week is designed to facilitate cross-expertise engagement, ensuring that everyone in Brussels and online can effortlessly transition from developer rooms and community meet-ups to policy panels and governance workshops, maximising the value of their visit and forging lasting connections.

Through this guide, we continue with our mission to foster open exchange between open source developer communities and European policymakers, driving European innovation with user-centricity, flexibility, and community at its core.

Hosting an event during the EU Open Source Week? 

Are you organising an open source or digital policy-related event in late January or early February 2025? Whether it is a conference, workshop, developer room, happy hour, or any other social event, you can promote it through the EU Open Source Week interactive guide.

Don’t miss this opportunity to showcase your event! Click here to add it to the guide!

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In 2023, OpenForum Europe and the OpenForum Academy instituted the Basil Cousins’ Award, in memory of our co-founder, Basil Cousins. A pioneer in understanding the role of open technologies and open source in society. Dedicated to Cousins’ legacy, the award is meant to encourage future generations committed to rigorous thought and research in the field of open innovation and open technology. 

Building Basil Cousins’ Legacy 

Connecting people and supporting the development of young individuals was core to Cousins’ vision of promoting open technology. In the words of his friend and OFE co-founder Graham Taylor, Basil Cousins was a mentor to many and an important supporter of young open technology entrepreneurs and experts. The Basil Cousins’ Awards aims to continue shedding light on the potential of junior researchers, as Taylor emphasised when he noted that “there is a brightness with PhD researchers, an enthusiasm to be captured”. 

With the Basil Cousins’ Award, OFE continues to build upon Cousins’ legacy by bringing people together and showcasing the work of promising academics. In 2023, Jérémie Haese, a PhD student at the University of Lausanne, became the first laureate for his research on the adoption of open source by proprietary firms. The award was presented to him by Graham and Debbie Pell, Cousins’ daughter, at the OFA Symposium in Berlin.

Looking forward  and showcasing promising open source scholars

The Basil Cousins’ Award aims to promote research into how technology and society interact, a focus which also resonated with Haese’s own research interests. With a background in economics and management, Haese’s work focuses on investigating how technology impacts organisational management and vice versa. By researching the adoption of open source by proprietary firms, he was particularly interested in how this shift towards open source was impacting open source communities as well as firms’ own engineering teams. Understanding how open source communities respond to an increased uptake of and interest in their work, is critical for the promotion of open source technologies, their management, and economic value.

For Haese, receiving the award was a milestone and an important motivation in his PhD journey. He interpreted it as a sign that he was on the right path, that his research held value for the broader open source community. Haese said: “This is very valuable for early stage work, in terms of motivation and having people reading your work”. This sentiment of validation and recognition for young scholars is, according to Haese, the most important aspect of the Basil Cousins’ award. With many academic awards focusing on tenured academics, the Basil Cousins’ award offers a unique opportunity for young scholars to gain recognition and exposure.

The 2024 Basil Cousins’ Award

Thinking back on the experience of receiving the award, Haese further highlighted that a key benefit was the opportunity to engage with an audience beyond academia and to receive feedback from those developing open source and influencing digital policies. He viewed the award and the OFA Symposium as an excellent way to contextualise his research and bring theoretical work closer to the reality of open source, whilst learning more about critical questions being discussed by open source industry and policy experts in his field.

The 2024 edition of the OpenForum Academy Symposium, to be held at Harvard on 13-14 November 2024, will host the second edition of the Basil Cousins’ Award, to be granted to one of the programme’s participants. Reflecting on Jérémie Haese’s words and Cousins’ dedication to connecting people and supporting young individuals, this second edition will be an opportunity to continue building Basil Cousins’ legacy by looking towards the future.

Jérémie Haese’s reading list: 

If you are interested in learning more about proprietary firms’ engagement with open source, we asked Jérémie Haese to share his reading list with us.

• August et al. (2020): https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.2020.3674
• Chen et al. (2021): https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/isre.2021.1086
• Nagle (2019): https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2977
• Lerner et Tirole (2005): https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/0895330054048678

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1. Cyber Resilience Act
2. AI Act
3. Product Liability Directive

Part of OpenChain’s webinars series, these webinars are for a global audience and don’t assume knowledge of the EU’s legislation and procedures.

In different measures, these webinars cover:

• General content (obligations) and objectives of the new law
• Procedural status, and what’s next
• How regulation affects FOSS differently (our business models, our collaborative development)
• The FOSS-specific clauses that are in each of these legal texts
• Compliance for people outside the EU
• Recommendations for other countries considering similar legislation
• How the FOSS ecosystem participates in legislative procedures

These pieces of legislation were mostly developed between 2022 and early 2024, and the policy resources of the EU’s FOSS ecosystem were thus divided between these procedures while also working on the Data Act, Digital Markets Act, Interoperable Europe Act and others.  In addition to participating directly in the legislative procedures, the we had to create collaborative structures to maximise our efficiency and to hopefully emerge with a stronger, more effective team to continue the policy work of the FOSS ecosystem in the coming years.

Webinar #1: The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA)

Webinar #2: The AI Act

Webinar #3: The Product Liability Directive (PLD)

Again, we’d like to thank Shane Coughlan of OpenChain. There may be others in their OpenChain webinars that would be of interest to you.

The post Webinars on recent EU regulation for non-EU audiences appeared first on OpenForum Europe.

The goal of OSPOs for Good Symposium – and by extension the side events that were also held – was twofold: (1) to direct energy towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and (2) to highlight the interests of open source developers and policymakers as part of the United Nations (UN) agenda. Over the two days, the event had 49 speakers and 38 members of the organising committees, which together ensured that the global open source community was well-represented.

Since the beginning of this year, OFE has been on the Programme Committee for the conference, helping to set the agenda for the conference, as well as guiding the setup of the main panel discussions and coordinating with confirmed speakers and presenters. While it was a significant amount of work to help set up and execute the event – with the bulk of effort coming from the UN Tech Envoy’s Office – the conference in its final form was a watershed moment; both a milestone for OFE’s open source advocacy in Europe and beyond, as well as a big opportunity for the global open source community to come together.

It’s worth appreciating why this is such a significant achievement. The idea of embedding principles of openness and open source in the high-level agenda of the UN, let alone giving open source developers a global platform, seemed a far-flung idea a few years ago. And while last year’s smaller first convening was a good step to change this, this year’s conference dramatically upped the stakes, offering a massive, international forum where the global open source community was convened in a big and rewarding way.

In this blog, we summarise the week’s activities, including the conference as well as related side events. We also share early ideas and lessons learned and consider what comes next from the momentum built over the last week’s activities.

The ‘Main Event’: Highlight from OSPOs for Good 2024

A view from the front of the UN’s ECOSOC Chamber.

We will not discuss all of the conference, but it was a great experience for all of the OFE Team. Astor opened the conference with some first remarks, Nick MCed throughout both days, and Sachiko hosted a panel on “Engaging the Open Source Community” on Day 2. (For a more in-depth overview of everything, check out Stéfane Fermigier’s detailed summary and this article on OSOR.) For our recap, we will focus below on what was showcased about European policymaking and innovation on the UN stage. If you would like to check out the conference and watch playback of the main sessions, you can head over to UN Web TV where all the recordings have been made available.

In a thematic track on Open Source and Government on Day One of the conference, Pearse O’Donohue – a Director for Future Networks Director from DG-CNECT –  shared more about European values and what Europe has to share with the rest of the globe. In his keynote remarks, O’Donohue highlighted lessons on open source policymaking from the development of the critical role of the European Commission OSPO. He shared lessons learned from public administrations across Europe, what the Commission gained from engaging with the open source community in drafting the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), and the vital need for investment in digital commons.

Pearse O’Donohue from the European Commission’s DG-CNECT sharing his opening keynote remarks in the UN ECOSOC Chamber.

Some of the other highlights of the event from a European perspective included the discussions around Open Source at the UN and Open Source at Work in the World. In Open Source at the UN, panellists presented some of the interesting innovations the UN Secretariat and other UN agencies are working on to bring open source into their own work and advance open source innovation globally.

For example, Sameer Chauhan – director of the United Nations International Computing Center (UNICC) – spotlighted how UNICC is hosting a mirrored instanced of OpenWallet, a European digital wallets solution being developed by the OpenWallet Foundation. The initiative aims to make it easier for governments across the globe to adopt the solution and contribute code back upstream. Such an effort shows how Europe can work with the UN on open source innovation and help increase collaboration on digital public infrastructure (DPI) between countries.

The Open Source at Work in the World thematic track also had a high degree of relevance for Digital Commons. In it, Adriana Groh of the Sovereign Tech Fund (STF) – a German public sector investment fund for open digital infrastructure – came to the front of the ECOSOC Chamber for a keynote with Andreas Reckert-Lodde, Interim Director of the Center for Digital Sovereignty (ZenDis) – an German federal driving cooperation between the open source community and German public administrations. Together, they showcased how parts of the government are coming together to support and invest in open source.

A slide from Adriana and Andreas’ keynote address for the ‘Open Source at Work in the World’ panel.

Groh talked about the work the STF is doing to invest in open digital base technologies (ODBTs), which form the foundations of open digital infrastructure, as well as the ecosystem-strengthening activities and Digital Commons investments being funded by STF. Reckert-Lodde, on the other hand, showcased the work ZenDis is leading on engaging the open source developer community. He reflected on the process of making open source code development both feasible and desirable from the perspective of public administration and public service delivery.

While there were many more highlights besides just these two, we believe that they collectively demonstrate how European businesses, the EU, and EU Member States have been pioneering the development, stewardship, and maintenance of open source software and standards for decades. We could not be more thrilled to see that work centred so prominently at the UN.

Government Spotlight: Policymaking and Strategy for Building Open Source Ecosystems

The day before the conference, OFE held an event with the Eclipse Foundation and the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), spotlighting the importance of governments in building and supporting open source ecosystems using policymaking and strategy.

Throughout the event, presenters and panellists discussed many of the challenges public administrations face in using and supporting open technologies at scale. The event, moderated by Nick Gates of OFE, kicked off with presentations from Jacob Green (OSPO++), Lucy Harris (DPGA), Enzo Ribagnac (Eclipse Foundation). The presenters shared contrasting, but complementary, perspectives on open source policymaking and strategy. One perspective focused on internal government adoption of open source, while the other focused on contribution and support to open source developer ecosystems.

Afterwards, there was a coffee break in which attendees brainstormed challenges and opportunities for governments regarding policymaking and strategy across each of these perspectives. Finally, a panel discussion happened where Enzo Ribagnac was joined by Leonhard Kugler (Center for Digital Sovereignty), Armando J. Manzueta-Peña (Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development in the Dominican Republic), and Lea Gimpel (DPGA).

Some of the panellists and organisers of the Government Spotlight onstage at The Great Hall at Cooper Union on Monday 8 July.

Together, the panellists responded to and discussed some of these challenges more critically, in the context of their own experiences and perspectives. Panellists broadly discussed some of the challenges in making “open source” work for institutions that have not normally been set up to work in the open. For example, they discussed the importance of open source policies, but also how policy is only a starting point for the many decisions that can be taken each and every day by institutions.

On the topic of adoption and use, panellists discussed how and why it is necessary to reform regulation and procurement of open source to help stimulate open source adoption, looking at the importance of legal compliance and security in designing new methods of engagement with the open source community. On the topic of engagement with ecosystems, panellists also considered the myriad challenges governments face in reducing risk. They noted, for example, the need to both fund education and skills programmes, but also the corresponding need to raise awareness and build capacity around open source in the public sector itself.

What’s Next for Open Source? Reflections from a day of reflection works

A card for the “What’s Next for Open Source?” workshops on the Linux Foundation website, which took place on Thursday 11 July.

While the main conference offered a bunch of fantastic opportunities for engagement with some of the main ideas of the conference, it was the “What’s Next for Open Source?” workshops on Thursday – co-organized by the Linux Foundation, OSPO++, and the Apache Software Foundation – which really helped bring things all together. Through the day’s three tracks and nine workshops, attendees were offered a chance to take a breath and reflect on what they had just learned. Sessions range from ones on speed mentoring and collective brainstorming to more topical ones on open source AI and open source infrastructure.

During one of the last sessions of the day, OFE organised a workshop, a series of mini panel discussions, on ‘Open Source Infrastructure for Social Good’ with the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) and the DPGA. This session attempted to remove the jargon of terms like digital public goods, digital commons, and digital public infrastructure to focus more holistically on the challenges governments face in using open source infrastructure for social good. The session considered open source infrastructure from many points of view, both as the code itself and the applications of code, as well as the organisational and policy infrastructure to support reuse of open source technologies.

The workshop featured three ‘mini-panels’, hosted by Jon Lloyd of the DPGA, Jake Watson of DIAL, and Nick from OFE. Each of the mini panels centred on different perspectives – the government perspective, the builder/maintainer perspective, and the support perspective, respectively. In his panel, Nick spoke with some of the people working to support adoption and reuse of open source technologies in governments across the globe, with focus on related issues such as readiness, policymaking, and capacity-building.

Nick’s mini-panel on the perspective of supports, people working on technology in global development cooperation.

What happens now?

One thing is clear from last week’s activities: the willingness from the open source community to do more to help the UN achieve the SDGs is there, as is the desire of the UN to help advance open source collaboration. In order to make good on this willingness, though, we – as a global community of organisations and individuals passionate about open source – need to find ways to continue coming together over the next years and make more concrete what we will do to achieve this agenda.

A good first step would be laying out what that vision for OSPOs for Good looks like as part of a manifesto, which can be brought to both policymakers and the open source community. Such a vision will help policymakers channel this momentum towards increased regional collaboration and more diverse forms of engagement with the open source community. It will also help open source developers and businesses take their own steps towards engaging with the global agenda. If we start now, we hope that potential future events can more tactically take stock of the progress we make, share lessons learned, and help strengthen open source collaboration.

Over the next two months, OFE will be working with RISE, the Tech Envoy’s Office, and the Linux Foundation to author and publish a conference report. This report will summarise some of the key ideas and lessons learned from the week’s events, as well as offer forward-looking ideas and policy recommendations for how this momentum can be channelled. Throughout the next year, we will also continue to work with the UN to help embed open source in its strategic agenda and engage with the open source community.

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We would be remiss not to acknowledge some key people without whom these four days would not have happened. First and foremost, we would like to thank the UN Tech Envoy’s office for their invaluable efforts. This includes: Omar Mohsine, Mithusha Kajendran, Mehdi Snene, and Mortiz Carl Fromageot. Throughout, Jacob Green of OSPO++ was a tireless open source leader who helped bring the event into existence, as were the representatives from the Federal Government of Germany and the Republic of Kenya. We would also like to thank our many collaborators and contributors to the side events and social events, including those at the Linux Foundation, GitHub, Eclipse Foundation, DPGA, Sovereign Tech Fund, Mozilla, Open Source Business Alliance, and many, many others.

Stay tuned for what comes next and watch this space!

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The DPGA is part of the response to the United Nation’s call to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere. The announcement comes on the heels of a big year for digital policymaking in Europe, one where open source technologies are increasingly being situated on the European digital agenda, particularly in legislation like the Interoperable Europe Act, the Cyber Resilience Act and the AI Act.

The DPGA is a multi-stakeholder initiative with a mission to accelerate the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in low- and middle-income countries by facilitating the discovery, development, use of and investment in digital public goods. Digital public goods means Open Source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices. They follow the principle of “do no harm” by design and are fundamental to attaining the SDGs.

“OFE over the last years has been increasingly working to bring disparate voices together around common values and shared beliefs around open source, amplifying their voices to influence policy formulation and support strategic decision-making,” said Astor Nummelin Carlberg, executive director of OFE. “As an organization, we believe that mission has made a natural ally of the digital public goods movement, both in Europe and beyond. We are excited to join the DPGA and bring a distinctly European perspective to the alliance, as well as join the global community of organizations championing the virtues of sustainable and reusable digital public goods. We will do our very best as part of the alliance to champion European values and connect European experiences with policy innovation happening globally.”

OFE’s work aligns with that of the DPGA in many ways, including these three OFE’s initiatives that will be included as part of the DPGA’s Annual Roadmap for 2024:

1. Promoting DPGs in the European Open Source Ecosystem: OFE brings the European open source communities and public administrations together to promote dialogue around reusable software and its value in achieving the SDGs. We will use our expertise and presence in European communities focused on open technologies to centre and promote DPGs, as well as advocate for more European projects to register as DPGs.
2. OSPOs-Related Advocacy: OFE reaffirms the roles OSPOs are having in promoting open source development, adoption and use in Europe, and shares those lessons from our networks globally. We aim to do this by doing new policy and research in Europe focused on OSPOs, as well as
   participating in more OSPO-related events globally alongside the DPGA to
   help share lessons on OSPOs from Europe.
3. DPGs and Digital Commons: OFE will involve itself more in global policy discussions around DPGs and discuss the complementarity of ideas around digital commons. We will do this by promoting dialogue and sharing lessons learned around the funding and governance of open source software being used at scale as part of the critical digital infrastructure our societies depend on.

Liv Marte Nordhaug, CEO of the DPGA, stated, “Welcoming Open Forum Europe is a milestone for the Digital Public Goods Alliance in its engagement with the European open source ecosystem. OFE’s unique convening role in Europe and its reputation in Brussels policy circles make it an organisation at the forefront of the open source movement in Europe. This can help amplify lessons learned in Europe and enable knowledge sharing that advances digital public goods. We are excited to work with OFE and their partners to advance conversations around approaches for funding and governing digital public goods to support human-centered digital transformation worldwide.”

To learn more about DPGA, visit https://digitalpublicgoods.net/ or email hello@digitalpublicgoods.net.

To learn more about the news and opinions of the OFE and its stakeholders, visit the OFE website and sign up to receive our newsletter. You can also get in touch at info@openforumeurope.org. 

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