Amanda Brock
CEO of Open UK
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OFA Fellows
Amanda Brock
CEO of Open UK
Amanda Brock is CEO of OpenUK the UK organisation for the business of Open Technology – open source software, open hardware and open data – with a purpose of UK Leadership and International Collaboration in Open Technology and she is the Executive Producer of State of Open Con https://stateofopencon.com/
She is a Board Member of the Open Source Initiative; appointed member of the Cabinet
Office’s Open Standards Board; Member of the British Computer Society Inaugural Influence Board; Advisory Board Member, Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance and Mimoto; and European Representative of the Open Invention Network.
A lawyer of 25 years’ experience, she previously chaired the Open Source and IP Advisory
Group of the United Nations Technology Innovation Labs, sat on the OASIS Open Projects
and UK Government Energy Sector Digitalisation Task Force Advisory Boards. She was
General Counsel of Canonical for 5 years from 2008 and set up their legal function.
Amanda is a judge in the IDG Foundry CIO 100 2023 having been a Judge in the We are Tech Women Rising Star Awards 2020-22.
She was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Women, Influence & Power in Law Awards UK 2022, and included in Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in Tech Long list in 2021 and 2022 and in their UK Tech50 Influencers longlist for 2022 and 2023, and in 2023 she has been listed in Computing’s IT Leaders 100,
https://www.computing.co.uk/leaders-100 She was included in the 2022 https://heroes.involverolemodels.org/ Involve HERoes list of 100 global women executives driving change by example.
She is the editor of Open Source Law, Policy and Practice (2nd edition) published by Oxford
University Press in October 2022, with open access thanks to the Vietsch Foundation
https://amandabrock.com/books/.
@openuk_uk https://openuk.uk/ https://amandabrock.com/
Andrew Katz
OSL Leader
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Andrew Katz
OSL Leader
Andrew Katz is recognised as a leader in the field of open source licensing in the UK. He was involved in the drafting of the UK Creative Commons Licence, and has contributed to the GPL Version 3 project. He has spoken at events including BCS conferences, and LinuxWorld Expo, and has sat on panel discussions involving open source software with other experts such as Alan Cox, John “maddog” Hall, Mark Shuttleworth and Glyn Moody. His articles and commentary have appeared widely in the press, including The Telegraph, Financial Times, Microscopeand the Register. He has lectured in the UK, Finland and the Netherlands. He is a founder editor and contributor to the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review.
The independent legal directory Chambers and Partners (2007 edition) says:
The “entrepreneurial” and “immensely experienced” Andrew Katz is an “easy guy to get along with” and a “technology enthusiast.” His expertise includes computer and telecommunications technology and he has a particular focus on open source licensing issues.
Andrew Updegrove
Founding Partner, Gesmer Updegrove LLP
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Andrew Updegrove
Founding Partner, Gesmer Updegrove LLP
Andrew Updegrove is a co-founder and partner of the Boston law firm of Gesmer Updegrove LLP. Since 1988 he has worked with over 200 consortia, accredited standards development organizations and open source foundations, most of which he helped form, assisting the largest technology companies in the world. He has testified before the United States Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, Congressional and state committees, and EU Parliamentary committees regarding consortia and standard setting, and has filed pro bono “friend of the court” briefs with the Federal Circuit Court, Supreme Court, and Federal Trade Commission on leading standards litigation. In 2002, he launched ConsortiumInfo.org , the most extensive resource on the Internet dedicated to consortia and standard setting, and Standards Today , a monthly e- Journal of news, ideas and analysis on standard setting. The Standards Blog was added to ConsortiumInfo.org in 2005. In 2004 he was asked to join the United States Standards Strategy revision committee and has served on each review committee thereafter. He received the President’s Award for Journalism from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 2005, and has served as a member of the Boards of Directors of ANSI, the Free Standards Group, the Linux Foundation and WorkCred; on the Advisory Board of HL7, an ANSI accredited health standards developer and Open Source for America; and as a Charter Fellow of OpenForum Europe, a think tank advising the EU and member states on open technology policy matters. He is a graduate of Yale University and the Cornell University Law School.
Anthony D. Williams
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Anthony D. Williams
Anthony D. Williams is a best-selling author, speaker and consultant who helps organizations harness the power of collaborative innovation in business, government and society. He is the co-author of the groundbreaking bestseller Wikinomics and the much-anticipated follow-up MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World.
Anthony is currently a visiting fellow with the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and a senior fellow for innovation with the Lisbon Council in Brussels. Among other appointments, he is also an advisor to GovLoop, the world’s largest social network for government innovators and a founding fellow of the OpenForum Academy, a global research initiative focused on understanding the impact of open standards and open source on business and society.
Brian Kahin
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Brian Kahin
Following a career in government, academia, and industry associations, Brian Kahin is writing a book on digital economics and policy, explaining how cascading effects of digitization shape economic activity at multiple levels and lead to boundary blurring and policy conflicts. He stresses the role of alphanumeric text, multidimensional complementarity, political economy, and product-level and demand-side economies of scope. He also addresses problems of definition, measurement, and policy modeling in an expanding, increasingly complex environment that faces diverse interests and disciplinary perspectives. This environment has been further complicated by the emergence of “industrial strategy” as an umbrella term for rethinking policies in light of the climate crisis, the rise of China, the covid pandemic, and the invasion of Ukraine.
Brian was founding director of the Information Infrastructure Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government from 1989 to 1997. The first academic program to address the policy implications of the Internet, the Project addressed frontier issues around the rapid commercialization and expansion of the Internet, convening experts from government, industry, civil society, and academic institutions. In collaboration with Harvard Business School faculty, Brian developed a popular course on information technology, business strategy, and public policy.
During this period, Brian continued as part-time general counsel for the Interactive Multimedia Association, a trade association that he helped found in 1986. He also served as an active member of the Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy of the U.S. State Department, chairing the Working Group on Intellectual Property, Interoperability and Standards.
In 1997, Brian was recruited to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as Senior Policy Analyst. He was a principal member of the Clinton administration’s Task Force on Global Electronic Commerce, chairing the Interagency Working Group that oversaw the transition of Internet away from DARPA and NSF subsidies toward a unique form of global governance under ICANN. He later chaired the Interagency Working Group on the Digital Economy on behalf of the National Economic Council. He commissioned two studies by the Science and Technology Policy Institute – one on patent quality and business effect and one on web standards.
Concerned by the radical expansion of the patent system to embrace abstract methods, the emergence of patent trolls, evidence of regulatory capture, and inattention to patent reform within the administration, Brian returned to academia, as a professor at the University of Maryland and then at the University of Michigan. During this period, he participated on five panels before the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice as the competition agencies investigated the patent system and patent practice. He was an active participant in the European Union debate over a proposed directive on “computer-implemented inventions” and a founding director of European Policy for Intellectual Property, a Fifth Framework research project that became an academic society. Offered an opportunity to address patent policy full- time as a senior fellow for the Computer & Communications Industry Association, he spent the following years addressing systemic problems involving patents, standards, and the need for patent reform. Brian then returned to his earlier interest in digital economics and policy, including contract work for the OECD, which is now embodied in his work in progress. In addition to his early teaching, he has taught courses on the business, law and policy of standards (University of Colorado), innovation policy (Harvard Kennedy School), and digitization, globalization and public policy (University of Washington, Evans School). He has been Innovation Policy Fellow in residence at OECD’s Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation; a fellow at MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy; and a visiting scholar at the University of Washington School of Law. He retained affiliations with OECD/STI (Digital Economy Fellow); CCIA (Senior Fellow), and the Technology and Policy Research Initiative at Boston University (Associate Fellow).
Brian has edited ten books on the Internet and the digital economy, including Standards Policy for Information Infrastructure (1994, with Janet Abate), Borders in Cyberspace (1996, with Charles Nesson), Coordinating the Internet (1997, with James Keller), Understanding the Digital Economy (2000, with Erik Brynjolfsson), and Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy (2006, with Dominique Foray), all published by MIT Press. Brian is a graduate of Harvard College (1969) and Harvard Law School (1976).
Cameron Nylon
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Cameron Nylon
Cameron Neylon is Professor of Research Communication at the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University and Director of Knowledge Unlatched Research. He is interested in how to make the internet more effective as a tool for scholarship. He writes and speaks regularly on scholarly communication, the design of web based tools for research, and the need for policy and cultural change within and around the research community. A one-time biomedical scientist who has moved into the humanities via Open Access and Open Data advocacy, his research and broader work focuses on how we can make the institutions that support research sustainable and fit for purpose for the 21st century and how the advent of new communications technology is a help (and in some cases a hindrance) for this.
Carlo Daffara
CEO and co-founder at NodeWeaver
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Carlo Daffara
CEO and co-founder at NodeWeaver
Carlo Daffara is the founder of NodeWeaver, a company implementing open source-based edge cloud platforms; formerly head of research and development at Conecta, a consulting firm specializing in open source systems. Former Italian member of the European Working Group on Libre Software and co-coordinator of the working group on SMEs of the EU ICT task force; since 1999 works as evaluator for EU framework programs in research and innovation. Since 2000, member of the Internet Society (ISOC) working group Committee on public software and Coordinator of the open source platforms technical area of the IEEE technical committee on scalable computing.
His current work and research interests include the economics of IT, secure development practices and the edge-to-cloud continuum.
Carlo Piana
Lawyer
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Carlo Piana
Lawyer
Carlo Piana is an IT Lawyer and free/open source software leading expert, a digital liberties advocate, a member of the Bar of Milano, and admitted to the Supreme Court of Italy. He has been working on licensing, compliance, business development, public procurement, and lobbying for nearly three decades, serving for more than 10 years as the external general counsel of the Free Software Foundation Europe, whom he represented in their antitrust activities in support of the European Commission.
Carlo is currently a member of the Board of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and a Fellow of the Open Forum Academy.. He is a founding partner of the law firm Array and is on the steering committee of the Eclipse Oniro Working Group.
Catharina Maracke
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Catharina Maracke
Dr. Catharina Maracke is an associate professor at the Graduate School for Media and Governance, Shonan Fujisawa Campus, at Keio University and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Her current work and research interests include intellectual property and policy, the interaction between law and new media, and the role of Universities in the development of Internet policies.
Catharina graduated from the University of Kiel and the Hamburg Court of Appeal, Germany, with the first and second state examination. While studying, she obtained a scholarship from the Max-Planck-Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law in Munich to write her PhD thesis on the history of the German Copyright Act of 1965. As international Director at Creative Commons she has overseen the international license porting projects. Catharina has served as a board member for iCommons and the OpenCourseWare Consortium and as a member of WEF Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Intellectual Property System. She is admitted to the bar in Germany.
Chris Taggart
CEO and co-founder
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Chris Taggart
CEO and co-founder
Chris Taggart is the CEO and co-founder of OpenCorporates: The Open Database Of the Corporate World, which has worked with the open data community to build a database of over 25 million companies, all open data. Originally a journalist and later magazine publisher, he now works full time in the field of open data, and is on the UK government’s Local Public Data Panel, and Mayor of London’s Digital Advisory Board.
Dirk-Willem van Gulik
Internet engineer, Apache founder
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Dirk-Willem van Gulik
Internet engineer, Apache founder
Dirk has 35 years of Internet engineering experience. He helped create, and was the president of the Apache Software Foundation, has worked on the Apache webserver since the early days of the NCSA that helped define what is now commonly referred to as `open source’ software. He is currently the VP of Public Policy for the ASF (like all key positions at Apache – as a volunteer). He has worked for the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, the United Nations, telecommunications firms, national satellite&space agencies and founded several startups. He participated in international standards bodies, such as the IETF and W3C on metadata, GIS, PKI, Security, Architecture and Internet standards During the startup-years – Dirk build the initial engineering team at Covalent, as VP of Engineering and was instrumental in the first two rounds of venture capital funding in San Francisco. Dirk-Willem was one of the Founders of Asemantics, a leader in Enterprise Information Integration; which helped make the Semantic Web, and standards such as RDF, a reality. He then initiated Joost.com, a peer to peer based video and build and lead the team that created the worlds first instant play P2P viewer and a back office system with user profile driven advert targeting and payment settlements. He was the Chief Technical Architect at the BBC where has helped shape the audience facing delivery platform Forge in the time for the Olympics and where he helped make open standards, information security and compliance a core enabler for business processes. He was the CTO for the Dutch Ministry of Health during the Covid crisis and instrumental in the very privacy preserving, Zero Knowlege Proof, based Corona app of the Netherlands. And helped make the international Qr codes for travel a reality at the European Commission. He currently works on several medical and privacy intensive security projects with a heavy emphasis on Architecture and Governance. When not at work, he loves to sail, hang out at the makerspaceleiden.nl or play with his lego.
Dr Andrew A. Adams
Multi-disciplinary researcher
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Dr Andrew A. Adams
Multi-disciplinary researcher
Dr Andrew A. Adams is a multi-disciplinary researcher looking at social, legal, and ethical (SLE) aspects of computer and communications technologies.
He is Deputy Director of the CBIE at Meiji University in Tokyo. He is currently under-employed as a contract lecturer and research fellow.
He previously engaged in research in computational logic and computer mathematics.
Dr. Björn Lundell
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Dr. Björn Lundell
Dr. Björn Lundell has been researching the Open Source phenomenon for a number of years. He co-lead a work package in the EU FP6 CALIBRE project (2004-2006) and was the technical manager in the industrial (ITEA) research project COSI (2005-2008), involving analysis of the adoption of Open Source practices within companies. He is the project leader for the Open Source Action (OSA)-project (2008-2010), and the project leader for a Nordic (NordForsk) OSS Researchers Network (2009-2012). His research is reported in over 60 publications in a variety of international journals and conferences. He is a founding member of the IFIP Working Group 2.13 on Open Source Software, and the founding chair of Open Source Sweden, an industry association established by Swedish Open Source companies. He was the organiser of the Fifth International Conference of Open Source Systems (OSS 2009), which was held in Skövde, Sweden.
Dr. Daniel M. German
Associate Professor
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Dr. Daniel M. German
Associate Professor
Daniel M German is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Victoria. His duties are divided along two main areas:
Research into software engineering. In particular, software evolution, open source and intellectual property. He also explores computational photography in his spare time.
Teaching several courses at Uvic, primarily Database Systems, Social and Professional Issues, Media Applications and more recently Intro to Software Engineering.
Dr. Efthymios Altsitsiadis
Assistant Professor at Copenhagen Business School and Co-founder of White Research
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Dr. Efthymios Altsitsiadis
Assistant Professor at Copenhagen Business School and Co-founder of White Research
Efthymios is a board member of the OpenForum Europe and has long been a member of its OpenForum Academy, active mostly in social / user aspects of ICT and openness.
He is also an Assistant Professor of behavioural Economics at the Copenhagen Business School and is the co-founder of White Research, a research & consulting firm based in Brussels. His background is multidisciplinary with studies in Economics, Marketing, Information Technology and advanced analytic methods, while his experience covers roles in industry and academia.
Efthymios has worked closely for many years with the European Commission in Brussels, serving both as an expert evaluator but also as a scientist and contractor. He currently overlooks a portfolio of more than 30 large-scale projects traversing every major application area: from sustainability, to food, transport, energy, health, ICT and innovation. His main interest is understanding how people adopt, use and misuse technology, how technology influences their decision-making, perceptions, attitudes, and how machine behaviour can be shaped in the process.
As a big believer in user centricity, he hopes to contribute to a strong multidisciplinary response to humanity’s most pressing challenges and aims to emphasize human aspects in technical policy areas (like OS/OH) where societal issues are in risk of being neglected.
Dr. Ian Brown
Independent Consultant
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Dr. Ian Brown
Independent Consultant
Dr Ian Brown is an Internet regulation expert who consults for governmental organisations and other clients, including a recent report on AI accountability for the UK government and advising Open Society Foundations on digital market contestability. Ian is Visiting Professor at FGV Law School in Rio de Janeiro, and was previously Principal Scientific Officer, at the UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Professor of Information Security and Privacy at the Oxford Internet Institute until 2016. He has worked as a consultant for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on their study of global cybercrime. For the OECD, he co-authored with Peter Sommer the 2010 report “Reducing Systemic Cybersecurity Risk”. His most recent books are Regulating Code: Good Governance and Better Regulation in the Information Age (with Christopher T. Marsden) (2013, MIT Press) and Research Handbook on Governance of the Internet (editor, 2013, Edward Elgar).
Dr. Jochen Friedrich
Technical Relations Executive
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Dr. Jochen Friedrich
Technical Relations Executive
Jochen Friedrich leads IBM’s team for Standardisation and Technical Regulation in Europe and is part of the corporate IBM standards and open source strategy organisation. Jochen holds a number of positions in European standardisation. He is a member of the ETSI Board and chairs the ETSI Board strategy group on policy and regulation. He is also co-chair of
the DIN Presidential committee FOCUS.ICT and chair of the German Standardisation Council Industrie 4.0 Expert Panel. Jochen is the current President of Ecma International; he is a member of the DKE Advisory Council Technology and some further subcommittees in standards bodies.
Jochen also holds lead roles in European industry and trade associations: He chairs the standardisation task force in OpenForum Europe (OFE), is chair of the standardisation working group in the German ICT association BITKOM, and is a member of the German Federation of Industry working group on Technology Policy.
As representative for OpenForum Europe in the EU Commission’s advisory group “ICT Multi-Stakeholder Platform” Jochen is chairing the Task Force on the Rolling Plan for ICT standardisation. He is also a member of the German government’s Advisory Council for ICT Technologies BSIKT and a sherpa member of the German national Strategy Forum on Standardisation.
Jochen is a Fellow of the OpenForum Academy.
Dr. Jun Iio
Professor at Chuo University
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Dr. Jun Iio
Professor at Chuo University
He was born in Gifu in 1970. He received his Master’s degree in Mathematical Engineering and Information Physics from the University of Tokyo in 1994 and joined Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc. in the same year. He has been a visiting associate professor at the International Center of Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology since 2009. In 2013, he became an Associate Professor at the Department of Socio-informatics, Faculty of Letters, Chuo University, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Science and Engineering, Institute of Social Science, Chuo University, and a Professor at the same department at the same university from 2014. He is now a Professor at the Faculty of Global Informatics at the same university since 2019. He is engaged in research on the interaction between humans and information systems. His research keywords are image processing, user interface, optimization of information systems, etc. He is an HCD-Net certified human centered design expert, Professional Engineer (Information Engineering), and Ph.D. in Engineering.
Dr. Maha Shaikh
Associate Professor in Information Systems at ESADE
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Dr. Maha Shaikh
Associate Professor in Information Systems at ESADE
Maha Shaikh is an Associate Professor at ESADE Business School. Maha has a PhD in Information Systems from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She has held academic posts at King’s College London and Warwick Business School. Maha is an expert of digital and open innovation with a specific interest in open source communities, and how such online communities draw on algorithms and technology to organize their collective production.
Dr. Mathieu Paapst
Ass.professor IT and IP law, Privacylaw and Legal Tech
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Dr. Mathieu Paapst
Ass.professor IT and IP law, Privacylaw and Legal Tech
Dr. Mathieu Paapst works as a Coordinating Legal Advisor for the Netherlands Standardization Forum. The Standardization Forum supports the Dutch government in the development, use and establishment of open standards for electronic information exchange. In this way it promotes interoperability within the Dutch government system itself, but also in the relations between government agencies on one hand, and citizens and enterprises on the other. The second goal of the Standardization Forum is to prevent vendor lock-in and reduce costs in government spending on ICT.
Mathieu also works part-time as an assistant professor in Technologylaw at the University of Groningen. He is interested in the legal, ethical and sociological aspects of the information society, and in particular in the topic of interoperability. He graduated with a Master’s degree on Law and IT and in 2013 he received his PhD on a multidisciplinary research project (Law, Public Administration, Innovation and Technology Management) regarding open source and open standards policy resistance in IT procurement. He has been project coordinator and/or researcher for several Dutch research projects (e.g. on standardization policy compliance for the Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs, on semantic interoperability standards for the ministry of Justice, and on e-Casemanagement, an international research for the judicial organizations)
For many years he has been a board member of ISOC-NL and the Open State Foundation. Nowadays he is chairman of the supervisory board for the Pleio open source foundation.
In addition to his work as a scientist, legal advisor and board member, he has been the co-developer and co-founder of two very successful (+1 million users) open source plugins for WordPress (Complianz Privacy Suite; and Complianz Terms and Conditions). He also co founded and managed a medium-sized consultancy firm in the field of IT and law. In 2020 and 2022 he sold his shares in these companies.
Dr. Paul Adams
Software engineer
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Dr. Paul Adams
Software engineer
Trained as a software engineer and specialising in process management, Dr. Paul J. Adams has worked in both academia and industry as a researcher and project manager, covering a variety of Free Software-related topics. In 2009 he worked for Zea Partners conducting research on behalf of the commercial community involved in Zope and Plone development and services. Prior to this he worked as a research and project manager for Sirius Corporation in the UK. Paul graduated in 2004 as a Software Engineer, from the University of Durham, UK. His subsequent doctorate was conducted between 2005 and 2009 from the University of Lincoln. Paul was awarded Chartered IT Professional status, in 2008 and is a full professional member of the British Computer Society (for whom he is co-founder and former chairman of the Open Source Specialist Group), IEEE as well as of KDE e.V. and the Fellowship of the FSFE.
Dr. Richard Danbury
Senior lecturer, department of journalism, at City, University of London
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Dr. Richard Danbury
Senior lecturer, department of journalism, at City, University of London
Dr. Richard Danbury teaches journalism and is an academic lawyer. He practiced — briefly — as a criminal barrister before joining the BBC, where he worked for about a decade specializing in interviews and investigations, winning awards for his work. He now runs an MA in investigative journalism at City, University of London, and has consulted internationally on the teaching of both media law and investigative journalism for a variety of NGOs. He is an expert at Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression project, has coordinated Channel 4’s investigative journalism training scheme, and has been the BBC’s Advanced Law trainer. He is a member of the Scott Trust Review Panel, the organization that deals with editorial complaints in relation to the Guardian’s content. His doctorate in media law is from Oxford University, and his post-doctoral research into copyright and news was at Cambridge.
Dr. Tim Hubbard
Director of ELIXIR, Professor of bioinformatics at King’s College London
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Dr. Tim Hubbard
Director of ELIXIR, Professor of bioinformatics at King’s College London
Tim Hubbard is Director of ELIXIR, the European research infrastructure for biological data, and Professor of bioinformatics at King’s College London. He is also a member of the Technical Advisory Group for Genomics (TAG-G) at the World Health Organisation.
Between 2013 and 2024 he was seconded to Genomics England for the 100,000 genomes project. Since 2019 Genomics England has mainstreamed the use of whole genome sequence analysis in normal patient care, as part of the English National Health Service (NHS) Genome Medicine Service, while continuing to provide consented access to genome and clinical data for research through a “Trusted Research Environment” (TRE). Tim subsequently led the TRE work-stream at Health Data Research UK (HDRUK). He has long been an advocate of open data for science and society, however working with sensitive data, he believes that research should take place within TREs to protect privacy and provide transparency on data use. The TRE/SDE/SPE (Secure Data Environment/Secure Processing Environment) approach is now NHS policy in UK and planned for the European Health Data Space (EHDS). ELIXIR is coordinating infrastructure to support the 1+ Million Genomes project that will contribute to the EHDS.
Until 2013 Tim was Head of Informatics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute where he was one of the organisers of the sequencing of the human genome. In 1999 he co-founded the Ensembl project to analysis, organise and provide access to the human genome and from 2007 led the GENCODE project to annotate the structure of all human genes.
Dr. Tony Cornford
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Dr. Tony Cornford
Dr. Tony Cornford is a Senior Lecturer in the Information System and Innovation Group of the Department of Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research interests include e-Government and open source development processes and he has published research that considers the role of technicalagents in open source communities. He undertakes research into in public sector strategies for use of open source software. Together with Maha Shaikh, another OFE Fellow, and with the support of OFE he has prepared a report for the UK Cabinet Office on the Total Cost of Ownership of Open Source Software.
His other primary research interests are focused on healthcare information systems and he has published studies on telehealth, technology and health policy, electronic prescribing systems, evaluation, and healthcare infrastructures. He recently worked as part of two teams undertaking evaluations of key aspects of the UK’s NHS National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT). The first was an evaluation of the Electronic Prescribing Service, and the second was an Evaluation of the National Care Records Service in secondary care. He has also undertaken a study for the NHS Connecting for Health to establish the lessons that can be learned from the various implementations in the UK of electronic prescribing in secondary care.
Emma Mulqueeny
CEO
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Emma Mulqueeny
CEO
Emma Mulqueeny is the CEO of Rewired State and Young Rewired State: independent developer networks delivering change for industry and country. Rewired State is the only independent developer network in the UK with over 600 software developers and designers, bringing about digital innovation and revolution through rapid prototyping events focused on research and development (R&D) and marketing campaigns.Young Rewired State is the only young developer network of UK kids aged 18 and under who have taught themselves how to code.Emma writes regularly for the Guardian and on her own blog and is best known for her campaign to ‘Teach our kids to code’, relentlessly pushing the potential of the UK digital industry.
Flavia Marzano
Digital Transformation Consultant
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Flavia Marzano
Digital Transformation Consultant
Flavia Marzano, graduated in Computer Science at the University of Pisa. President of the Scientific Committee of the Ampioraggio Foundation. Involved for more than 25 years in the promotion of free software in the Italian Public Administrations, she took part in national and regional boards for the definition of the legislation on free software in the Public Administration and in particular in the definition of the Codice dell’Amministrazione Digitale (DECRETO LEGISLATIVO 7 marzo 2005, n. 82), norm which provides specific clauses for the adoption of the free software in Italy. As Councilor for the Municipality of Rome, in 2016 she prepared a resolution that commits the institution to adopt free software unless justified. She also deals with analysis of complex processes (in particular in the field of Local Public Administration) and design and management of innovation in processes. She has a wide and differentiated experience in the field of academic and professional training and orientation with particular attitude for mentorship and coaching.
Frank Karlitschek
Founder and CEO of Nextcloud
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Frank Karlitschek
Founder and CEO of Nextcloud
Frank Karlitschek is a long time open source developer and privacy activist. He contributed to KDE and other free software projects since the end of the 90s and was a board member of the KDE e.V. He managed engineering teams for over 20 years and worked as head of unit and managing director at different internet companies. Over the years he founded several companies and helped startups with management consulting and investments to bootstrap and build successful products. Frank launched several initiatives over the years to make the internet more secure and more federated. Examples are the Open Collaboration Services and the User Data Manifesto. He founded ownCloud in 2010 and the successor Nextcloud in 2016 to create a fully open source and decentralized alternative to big centralized cloud companies. Frank is an advisor to the United Nations and was an invited expert at the W3C to help to create the ActivityPub standard. Frank has spoken at MIT, CERN, Harvard and ETH and keynoted LinuxCon, Latinoware, FASCIA, Campus Party and many other conferences. Currently Frank serves as the founder and CEO of Nextcloud GmbH.
Georg Greve
CEO and President of the Board at Kolab Systems AG
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Georg Greve
CEO and President of the Board at Kolab Systems AG
Georg Greve is the CEO and President of the Board at Kolab Systems AG. In addition he is active on the board of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) which he initiated in 2001 and chaired until 2009. He is also involved in various other groups such as Open Forum Europe (OFE) and the European Committee on Interoperable Systems (ECIS) and has been active in the inception of a variety of Open Source/Free Software activities such as the X.Org Foundation, the Open Database Alliance and others.
A self-taught software developer with several years of experience on the job, and traditionally trained Physicist, Mr Greve has many years of experience in interoperability, Open Standards, Free Software and IT policy. Having worked with a wide variety of groups including the European Commission, the World Bank, the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Internet Governance Forum (IGF), ICANN and others as well as on occasion representing entities such as Google and the German civil society as part of the German governmental delegation at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), Georg Greve has an encompassing perspective on these issues from a wide variety of angles.
For these accomplishments in Free Software and Open Standards Georg Greve was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon by the Federal Republic of Germany on 18 December 2009.
Glyn Moody
Writer, blogger and speaker
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Glyn Moody
Writer, blogger and speaker
Glyn Moody is a writer, blogger and speaker. His journalism has appeared in national newspapers, magazines and online; his blog about open source, open content and open culture is at http://opendotdotdot.blogspot. He frequently writes about copyright and privacy, and has published over 1900 articles about digital technology and culture in Techdirt. After gaining two degrees in mathematics from Cambridge University, Moody entered business journalism before specialising in the field of computers in 1983. He started writing, lecturing and consulting about business use of the Internet in early 1994, and about open source in 1995. In 1997 he wrote the first mainstream feature about GNU/Linux and free software, which appeared in Wired magazine. His book, “Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution” – the only detailed history of free software written so far – was published in 2001. “Digital Code of Life: How Bioinformatics is Revolutionising Science, Medicine and Business” appeared in 2004, and explores the rise and importance of the digital genomics. His latest book is “Walled Culture: How Big Content Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Keep Creators Poor”, published in 2022. Ebook versions are available free of charge.
Helen Darbishire
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Helen Darbishire
Helen Darbishire is a human rights activist specialising in the right of access to information (freedom of information) and the development of open and democratic societies with participatory and accountable governments. In 2006, Helen established the organisation Access Info, headquartered in Madrid, which these rights across Europe and globally.
Helen is an Open Government Partnership Envoy, having served two terms on the OGP Steering Committee (2016-2022), served for three years as Chair of the global anti-corruption UNCAC Coalition and is a founder and former two-term chair of the global Freedom of Information Advocates Network.
Helen started her career as a campaigner at Article 19 (1989 to 1998) based in London and Paris. She then worked with the Open Society Foundations (1999-2005), based first in Budapest and then in New York, directing global programmes on freedom of expression and freedom of information.
Helen holds a degree in Philosophy of Science and Psychology from Durham University, United Kingdom.
Resident in Madrid, she speaks English, French and Spanish.
Karel De Vriendt
Non-Executive Director
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Karel De Vriendt
Non-Executive Director
Karel De Vriendt worked twenty five years (1987-2012) as an IT expert for the European Commission. From 2005 to 2011, he was leading the team responsible for the implementation of the IDABC programme and for the definition and implementation of the ISA programme. He was actively involved in initiatives such as the transeuropean network TESTA, the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR) and the Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe (SEMIC) now both merged into Joinup and in the elaboration of the European Interoperability Strategy and the European Interoperability Framework. During his career, he also acquired a good practical experience in the public procurement of IT goods and services. Karel De Vriendt is now retired but has kept his interest in improving (computer based) public services via the collaboration between public and private partners and via the sharing and re-use of software based service components.
Knut Blind
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Knut Blind
Prof. Dr. Knut Blind studied economics, political science and psychology at Freiburg University. In the course of his studies he spent one year at Brock University (Canada), where he was awarded a BA. Finally, he took his Diploma in Economics and later his doctoral degree at Freiburg University. Between 1996 and 2010 he joined the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, Karlsruhe, Germany, as a senior researcher and at last as head of the Competence Center “Regulation and Innovation”.
In April 2006 Knut Blind was appointed Professor of Innovation Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Management at the Technische Universität Berlin. Between 2008 and 2016 he held also the endowed chair of standardisation at the Rotterdam School of Management of the Erasmus University. From April 2010 he is linked to the Fraunhofer Institute of Open Communication Systems in Berlin. In 2012, he initiated both the Berlin Innovation Panel and the German Standardization Panel. Besides numerous articles on innovation he published further contributions on standardization, patents and further innovation aspects in refereed journals.
Maria Luisa Stasi
Head of Law and Policy for Digital Markets at ARTICLE 19
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Maria Luisa Stasi
Head of Law and Policy for Digital Markets at ARTICLE 19
Maria Luisa Stasi is a competition lawyer by training and the Head of Law and Policy for digital markets at ARTICLE 19, where she contributes to the development of the organization’s policies on infrastructure, competition, and regulatory framework for telecoms, internet providers and online service providers. In addition, she provides legal support to the organization’s regional offices on digital rights and media policy issues. Maria Luisa is also a researcher at Tilburg University, focusing on pro-competitive remedies for free expression challenges on social media markets. Previously, Maria Luisa coordinated research, policy and capacity building projects at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute, and worked for various years as associate competition lawyer at the Italian leading law firm Bonelli Erede.
Martin Chapman
Independent Consultant on ICT Technical Regulations & Standards
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Martin Chapman
Independent Consultant on ICT Technical Regulations & Standards
Martin has 30 years of experience in global ICT standardisation at the formal International and European level and in a number of global consortia. He has several years of experience working on EU Policy, specialising in the intersection of EU legislation, technology, standards and Open Source. Martin has been appointed by the European Commission to a number of EU Expert Groups in the areas of standardisation policy, cybersecurity and cloud.
Martin is a member of the ICT standards advisory committee within the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI) and he is the editor of the International Standard on Cloud Computing Interoperability and Portability (ISO/IEC 19941).
Mirko Boehm
Senior Director Community Development, Linux Foundation Europe
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Mirko Boehm
Senior Director Community Development, Linux Foundation Europe
Mirko Boehm is a free and open source software contributor, community manager, licensing expert and researcher, with contributions to major open source projects like the KDE Desktop (since 1997, including several years on the KDE e.V. board), the Open Invention Network, the Open Source Initiative and others. He is a visiting lecturer and researcher on free and open source software at the Technical University of Berlin. Mirko Boehm has a wide range of experience as an entrepreneur, corporate manager, software developer and German Air Force officer. He joined the Linux Foundation in June 2023 as senior director for community development for LF Europe, where he focuses on driving engagement and collaboration between all European open source stakeholders. Mirko speaks English and German and lives in the Berlin area.
Prof. Axel Metzger
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Prof. Axel Metzger
Since 2008 Prof. Axel Metzger has been holding a professorship for private law, intellectual property, information technology law and private international law at the law faculty of the University of Hannover. His main research areas include international aspects of intellectual property, aspects of the development of Open Source, methodical aspects of international private and economic law as well as current questions of the German civil law with special regard to comparative and economic aspects.
Prof. Chris Marsden
Professor of AI, Technology and the Law, Monash University
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Prof. Chris Marsden
Professor of AI, Technology and the Law, Monash University
Chris Marsden @prof_marsden is Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Technology and the Law at Monash University and an expert on Internet and digital technology law, having researched and taught in the field since 1995. Chris researches regulation by code – whether legal, software or social code. He is author of five monographs including "Net neutrality" (2017), "Regulating Code" (2013 with Prof. Ian Brown), "Internet Co-regulation" (2011). He is author of over 200 refereed articles, book chapters, professional articles, project reports, keynote addresses, and other scholarly contributions. He joined Monash from the University of Sussex, where he was Professor of Law and
founder-Director of the Centre for Information Governance Research. He remains Visiting Researcher in the UK Trusted Autonomous Systems Governance and Regulation consortium (UKRI-EPSRC @tas_governance) and Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (UKRI-ESRC @Centre4ITP). He is Associate Director of the Monash Data Futures Institute from 2023.
Prof. Peter Murray-Rust
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Prof. Peter Murray-Rust
Peter Murray-Rust is a contemporary chemist born in Guildford in 1941. He was educated at Bootham School and Balliol College, Oxford. After obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy he became lecturer in chemistry at the (new) University of Stirling and was first warden of Andrew Stewart Hall of Residence. In 1982 he moved to Glaxo Group Research at Greenford to head Molecular Graphics, Computational Chemistry and later protein structure determination. He was Professor of Pharmacy in the University of Nottingham from 1996-2000, setting up the Virtual School of Molecular Sciences. He is now Reader in Molecular Informatics at the University of Cambridge and Senior Research Fellow of Churchill College.
His research interests have involved the automated analysis of data in scientific publications, creation of virtual communities e.g. The Virtual School of Natural Sciences in the Globewide Network Academy and the Semantic Web. With Henry Rzepa he has extended this to chemistry through the development of Markup languages, especially Chemical Markup Language. He campaigns for Open Data, particularly in science, and is on the advisory board of the Open Knowledge Foundation and a co-author of the Panton Principles for Open scientific data. Together with a few other chemists he was a founder member of the Blue Obelisk movement in 2005.
In 2002, Peter Murray-Rust and his colleagues proposed an electronic repository for unpublished chemical data called the World Wide Molecular Matrix (WWMM). In January 2011 a symposium around his career and visions was organized, called Visions of a Semantic Molecular Future. In 2011 he and Henry Rzepa were joint recipients of the Herman Skolnik Award of the American Chemical Society.
In 2014 he was awarded a Shuttleworth Fellowship to work on mining the content of the open scientific literature and making it semantic. He works with the National Institute for Plant Genome Research (Delhi, IN) with emphasis on (a) plant chemistry and (b) climate change. He was awarded grants by the Wikimedia Foundation to create tools and content for semantic scientific documents. Current activities include running virtual hackathons on these topics.
Prof. Tetsuo Noda
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Prof. Tetsuo Noda
Tetsuo Noda has worked for Shimane University as a researcher of Economics. He graduated from the graduate school of Hitotsubashi University in Japan in 1991.
He is now studying and teaching the economic influence of the information technology, at Shimane University. He is presenting some study papers on the relation between open source development style and the productivity in information service industries at academic societies domestically and internationally.
He is also leading the collaborative research of stabilization and the upgrade of OSS centering on Ruby as the Shimane University’s project research.
Rishab Ghosh
journalist, computer scientist and Open-source software advocate
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Rishab Ghosh
journalist, computer scientist and Open-source software advocate
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (born 1975) is a journalist, computer scientist and Open-source software advocate. A former Open Source Initiative board member, he is Founding International and Managing Editor of peer-reviewed journal First Monday, and Programme Leader of Free/Libre and Open Source Software at UNU-MERIT. Ghosh has undertaken several studies on free software, which he terms “FLOSS” – an alternative term for free software which he is credited with coinin. FLOSS emphasizes the essential value of the term “libre” (meaning with few or no restrictions).[3] Ghosh’s work represents an effort to reshape the global understanding of FLOSS, including the governmental and academic spheres.
Roberto Di Cosmo
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Roberto Di Cosmo
Roberto Di Cosmo is an alumnus of the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, with a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Pisa, Roberto Di Cosmo was associate professor for almost a decade at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. In 1999, he became a Computer Science full professor at University Paris Diderot, where he was head of doctoral studies for Computer Science from 2004 to 2009. He is currently on leave at Inria.
His research activity spans theoretical computing, functional programming, parallel and distributed programming, the semantics of programming languages, type systems, rewriting and linear logic, and, more recently, the new scientific problems posed by the general adoption of Free Software, with a particular focus on static analysis of large software collections. He has published over 20 international journals articles and 50 international conference articles.
In 2008, he has created and coordinated the European research project Mancoosi, that had a budget of 4.4Me and brought together 10 partners to improve the quality of package-based open source software systems. Following the evolution of our society under the impact of IT with great interest, he is a long term Free Software advocate, contributing to its adoption since 1998 with the best-seller Hijacking the world, seminars, articles and software.
He created in October 2007 the Free Software thematic group of Systematic, that helped fund over 50 Open Source research and development collaborative projects for a consolidated budget of over 200Me. From 2010 to 2018, he was director of IRILL, a research structure dedicated to Free and Open Source Software quality. He created in 2015, and now directs Software Heritage, an initiative to build the universal archive of all the source code publicly available.
Rufus Pollock
economist and co-founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation
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Rufus Pollock
economist and co-founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation
Rufus Pollock is an economist and co-founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation. He is currently a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow, an Associate of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge and a Director of the Open Knowledge Foundation which he co-founded in 2004.
He formerly held the Mead Research Fellowship in economics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
He is credited by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee for starting the Raw Data Now ‘meme’.
Shane Coughlan
Member of the General Assembly
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Shane Coughlan
Member of the General Assembly
Global Ambassador, OIN 2.0
Shane works at the intersection of Open Source policy, international standards & Intellectual Property strategy building scalable frameworks for complex, multi-stakeholder ecosystems.
Before joining Open Invention Network (OIN), Shane was General Manager of the OpenChain Project, leading the development of 2 ISO / IEC standards — ISO/ IEC 5230 for Open Source license compliance and ISO / IEC 18974 for Open Source security assurance — now adopted by organizations worldwide. He also coordinated industry guidance on Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) quality, AI Bill of Materials compliance and compliance program maturity, working with enterprises, nonprofits and government bodies across 3 continents.
Earlier in his career, Shane founded the European Legal Network, the largest professional community for Open Source legal practitioners. He also a co‑founded both the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review and the International Free and Open Source Software Law Book — the 1st comprehensive country‑by‑country analysis of Open Source law. During his first tenure with OIN from 2009 to 2015, he helped scale the patent non‑aggression community from dozens to thousands of participating companies.
For over a decade, Shane has served on the Board and General Assembly of OpenForum Europe, helping guide its evolution from a membership‑funded association into a project‑funded policy think tank.
Simon Phipps
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Simon Phipps
A well-known and respected leader in the Free software community, computer industry veteran Simon Phipps has been involved at a strategic level in some of the world’s leading technology companies. In addition to senior leadership positions he has worked in such hands-on roles as field engineer, programmer and systems analyst, as well as run a software publishing company. He worked with OSI standards in the eighties, on the first commercial collaborative conferencing software in the nineties, and helped introduce both Java and XML at IBM. He was a founding Director of the Open Mobile Alliance.
He takes an active interest in several Free and Open Source software organisations, serving as a Director of the Open Source Initiative and on the advisory board of Open Source for America. A widely read thought-leader, he publishes regularly both on his own blog and in many other places such as IDG’s ComputerWorldUK. He is part of FossAlliance, a group of proven international consultants for free and open source software.
In mid-2000 he joined Sun Microsystems where he helped pioneer Sun’s employee blogging, social media and community engagement programmes. In 2005 he was appointed Chief Open Source Officer, coordinating Sun’s extensive participation in Free and Open Source software communities until he left in 2010. In that role he oversaw the conversion to Free software of the full Java platform, the Solaris UNIX operating system, the SPARC architecture and the rest of Sun’s broad software portfolio, all under OSI-approved Free licenses.
He has been an outspoken advocate of the value of Open Document Format (ODF) and other truly open standards for businesses and governments. He has been an advisor to local and national government agencies across Europe, the Pacific Rim and Latin America as they have devised and implemented strategies around Free and Open Source software and is a co-founder of the FossAlliance consulting alliance.
He holds a degree in electronic engineering and is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the British Computer Society. His personal home page and blog.
Simon Wardley
Researcher for the Leading Edge Forum
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Simon Wardley
Researcher for the Leading Edge Forum
Simon Wardley, based in the UK, is a Researcher for the Leading Edge Forum and his focus is on the intersection of IT strategy and new technologies. Simon currently leads our research entitled The Clash of the Titans.
Simon’s most recent published research (December 2014) is entitled Of Wonders and Disruption where he attempts to predict the nature of technological and business change over the next 20 years. His previous research covers topics including The Future is More Predictable Than You Think – A Workbook for Value Chain Mapping, Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts: Strategies for an Increasingly Open Economy, Learning from Web 2.0 and A Lifecycle Approach to Cloud Computing.
Simon is a seasoned executive who has spent the last 15 years defining future IT strategies for companies in the FMCG, Retail and IT industries. From Canon’s early leadership in the cloud computing space in 2005 to Ubuntu’s recent dominance as the #1 Cloud operating system.
As a geneticist with a love of mathematics and a fascination in economics, Simon has always found himself dealing with complex systems, whether it’s in behavioural patterns, environmental risks of chemical pollution, developing novel computer systems or managing companies. He is a passionate advocate and researcher in the fields of open source, commoditization, innovation, organizational structure and cybernetics.
Simon is a regular presenter at conferences worldwide, and has been voted as one of the UK’s top 50 most influential people in IT in Computer Weekly’s 2012 and 2011 polls.
Simonetta Vezzoso
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Simonetta Vezzoso
Simonetta Vezzoso is a non-governmental advisor to the International Competition Network and a representative of the Italian Library Association in the World Intellectual Property Organization. After obtaining an Italian degree in law, a German Phd in economics and extensive interdisciplinary research work on innovation related areas, such as open source, competition policy in the Internet economy, Simonetta teaches the course of Intellectual Property and Competition Law at the University of Trento, Italy. She also regularly blogs on http://competitionwave.blogspot.it/.
Trond-Arne Undheim
Trond Arne Undheim, Research Scholar, Stanford University
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Trond-Arne Undheim
Trond Arne Undheim, Research Scholar, Stanford University
Trond is a futurist, scholar, podcaster, venture partner, and co-founder of Yegii. He is a Research Scholar in Global Systemic Risk, Innovation, and Policy at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. Trond is the creator of the boardgame End of The World 2075. He formerly worked with MIT, WPP, Oracle, and the EU. He’s a co-author (with Natan Linder) of Augmented Lean (Wiley 2022), and the author of Eco Tech (Routledge, 2023), Health Tech (Routledge 2021), Future Tech (Kogan Page 2021), Pandemic Aftermath (Atmosphere Press 2020), Disruption Games (Atmosphere Press 2020), and Leadership From Below (Lulu Press 2008). In addition, he hosts the Futurized podcast, and is a Forbes columnist. He holds a Ph.D. on the future of work and artificial intelligence.