OpenForum Europe (OFE) is excited to announce that we have joined 15 other leading open source organisations – and many more soon to come – in endorsing the United Nations (UN) Open Source Principles. This follows the initial endorsement by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), and is in accordance with a recent UN announcement.
The UN Open Source Principles, recently adopted by the UN Chief Executive Board’s Digital and Technology Network (DTN), provide guidelines to promote collaboration and the adoption of open source technologies within the UN and globally. Open Source United, a community of practice established by the DTN, works to advance open source technologies across UN agencies, funds, and programs. It encourages collaboration and scalable solutions to support the delivery of UN mandates, according to the UN announcement.
The UN Open Source Principles consist of eight guidelines, including making open source the standard approach for projects, encouraging active participation in the open source ecosystem, making security a priority in all software projects, and enabling and facilitating diverse and inclusive contributions.
OFE has been a steadfast supporter of the work of the UN over the last several years, and endorsing the UN Open Source Principles is a natural extension of our support for the open source collaboration efforts the UN has undertaken in the last years. In 2023 and 2024, OFE was a co-organiser of the OSPOs for Good Conference, hosted at the UN ECOSOC chamber in New York City. This year, we remain involved as a supporter of the expanded UN Open Source Week, which has been modelled in part off of the EU Open Source Week we helped start here in Brussels.
“We are excited to see the UN continuing its journey with open source and to them not just promoting open source collaboration through the principles, but embodying those principles internally. These principles are a logical consequence of the important work the UN is doing to change the way its own technology infrastructure works and provide choice to its agencies and Member States, and are now becoming a tool to improve open source collaboration globally. We are glad to see them opening up the principles to the rest of the world for endorsement and the positive message that sends, and are proud to support them in this endeavour,” says OpenForum Europe Executive Director Astor Nummelin Carlberg.
The other organisations that have endorsed the principles include the Document Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, European Open Source Academy, Gnome Foundation, Linagora, Linux Foundation Linux Professional Institute (LPI), Matrix.Org Foundation, Nextcloud GmbH,Open Knowledge Foundation, OpenInfra Foundation, Open Source Initiative, Rocket.Chat, Réseau de Transport d’Électricité, Sovereign Tech Agency, and ZenDiS – Centre for Digital Sovereignty.
If you would also like to support the UN Open Source Principles, register your interest here through the UN website.