Framatube

Europe’s ability to ensure digital sovereignty depends on viable, competitive alternatives to dominant global platforms. This session will examine how open source can underpin new ecosystems across cloud and AI — from infrastructure layers such as EuroStack and the Open Internet Stack to emerging open AI models and collaborative frameworks.

Panellists will discuss what is required to align regulation, procurement, and industrial policy to support European providers and users. They will also consider how openness can drive innovation while ensuring interoperability, trust, and strategic control in critical digital infrastructures.

Speakers: Paula Grzegorzewska (Senior Manager, Strategic Partnerships, Linux Foundation Europe), Alexandra Geese (Member of the European Parliament (Greens/EFA)), Thibaut Kleiner (Director, DG Connect, European Commission), Frank Karlitschek (CEO, NEXTCLOUD), Ritesh Paiboina

The session will present the UN Open Source Week Conference Report, offering a concise synthesis of the discussions held throughout the week. The report captures key insights, lessons learned, and best practices shared by policymakers, practitioners, and open-source leaders, highlighting how open source is increasingly shaping public-sector innovation, digital public infrastructure, and inclusive digital transformation.

Speakers: Arnau Monterde (Director of Participation and Innovation for Democracy, Barcelona City Council), Omar Mohsine (Open Source Coordinator, United Nations Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies (UN-ODET)) & Dr. Sachiko Muto (Chair, OpenForum Europe)

Delivering digital sovereignty requires more than regulation and investment — it depends on institutional capability. This session will focus on how large organisations, both public and private, are building the structures needed to adopt and sustain open approaches.

Panellists will discuss the role of Open Source Programme Offices (OSPOs) as engines of institutional learning, collaboration, and governance, and the potential for a EU policy to accelerate this transformation. Drawing on examples from critical sectors — including energy, transport, and public administration — the discussion will explore how organisational capacity can strengthen Europe’s digital resilience and enable openness at scale.

Speakers: Manuel Mateo Goyet (Acting Head of Unit CNECT.E.2, European Commission), Lucian Balea (Deputy Director of R&D and Open Source Director, RTE), Supriya Chitale

The EU’s economic security agenda emphasises reducing structural dependencies in critical and emerging technologies. In the public sector, this is closely linked to interoperability, control over digital infrastructure and the ability to sustain essential services. Open source already functions as a resilience mechanism through shared development and long-term maintainability.

This session will examine how the European Union’s public sector plays a key role in linking open source within economic security policy, with a focus on the Interoperable Europe Act, the revision of the European Interoperability Framework and reinforced by forthcoming initiatives such as the EU Open Digital Ecosystems Strategy. The role of open standards will take a central role. Panellists will also consider how standards are developed and governed, and how open source can align industrial policy, standard-setting and public sector digital transformation across the Union.

Speakers: Dirk Schrödter (Head of the State Chancellery (CdS) and Minister of Digitalization of the State of Schleswig-Holstein), Leontina Sandu (Head of Unit, Interoperability and Digital Government (DIGIT.B.2), European Commission), André Rebentisch (Software project and programme manager), Liv Marte Nordhaug (CEO, Digital Public Goods Alliance) & Dr. Jochen Friedrich (Technical Relations Executive, IBM)

Open technologies underpin, shape and drive our digital world and frontier innovation, yet their social, economic, and strategic impacts remain weakly evidenced in public policy discussions. This lack of coordinated, empirical research limits the ability of governments to recognise, value, and effectively leverage open technologies as part of their competitiveness, resilience, and digital sovereignty agendas.

This is the global launch of Open Technology Research, a joint initiative of OpenForum Europe, the Open Source Initiative, and the Open Knowledge Foundation. The initiative will build a shared research agenda, strengthen the global research community, and translate rigorous, policy-relevant evidence into decision-making processes at European and international level.

Speakers: Deborah Bryant (Interim Executive Director, Open Source Initiative), Astor Nummelin Carlberg (Executive Director, OpenForum Europe) & Renata Ávila (CEO, Open Knowledge Foundation)

Can Europe position itself as the global home of open source excellence — and what would it take to make that ambition real? This session will examine how Europe’s regulatory frameworks, investment instruments, and research policies interact with the open source ecosystem, and what conditions are needed to sustain innovation at global scale.

Panellists will discuss the role of initiatives such as the EU Sovereign Tech Fund, the impact of legislation including the DMA, AI Act, and CRA, and the importance of open governance, skills, and IT user capacity. Drawing comparisons with international strategies the discussion will explore whether Europe’s advantage lies in its developers, companies, foundations, or all of them together.

Speakers: Fabrizia Benini (Head of the Future Internet Unit, Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission), Baddý Sonja Breider (Board Chair, Drupal), Deborah Bryant (Interim Executive Director, Open Source Initiative), James Lovegrove