Europe in the World of Open Source

Whilst Europe has championed open source for a decade, collaboration now spans continents. Worldwide infrastructures, from digital payments to large language models, emerge, urging avoidance of duplicated efforts. Europe can learn, lead, and bridge gaps in policy, culture, and technology, but should not do this alone. Navigating open source’s responsibility is pivotal, as Europe absorbs insights and pioneers solutions globally.

The overarching policy message of this conference is an important one: strategic use of open technologies and Open Source in particular play an important role in solving digital policy challenges. The opportunities “openness” brings come in the form of decreasing vendor lock-in, increasing the resilience of the systems in question, while also boosting competition and ;

Open Source has reached the level of policy maturity that brought significant attention to topics relating to open technologies in the Cyber Resilience Act and the AI Act, the need for openness for interoperability in the Interoperable Europe Act, and other policy initiatives around the globe.

Policymakers once viewed Open Source as a niche, hobby activity. Now, Open Source is everywhere and there’s a strong will to connect and discuss the current and critical issues of digital with stakeholders. The EU Open Source Policy Summit is a place where policymakers expect to hear the voices of the most innovative drivers of the change to open.