OSAwards.eu Project Coordinator, Johan Linåker ( Senior Researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden) delivered a keynote talk during the recent OSPOs for Europe, held in Brussels, Belgium.
In his talk, Johan delved deeper into the opportunities of European's digital sovereignty through Open Source - and how to strategically utilise the opportunities before us. Europe remains digitally dependent on a few global providers - often tied by closed standards, restrictive contracts and limited access to data.
However, Johan noted that autonomy requires a systemic effort rather than immediate gratification of solutions. Autonomy in this case would not entail working in silos or in isolation, but through a more active consideration of openness : placing the notions of interoperability, reuse, shared innovation as the catalysers of any strategic opportunity for Europe.
If open source has been around for decades, why was it not more widely adopted?
And this can perhaps best be connected to public sectors' conformity, or better known as ''comfort syndrome''. Johan explained this as public sectors tendency of having risk-averse procurement, siloed mindsets and resistance to change. In order to take a step towards sustainable leadership, Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) are key drivers of such change - translating policy into practice, fostering collaboration and driving change across government, academia and industry.
However, building trust and raising awareness amongst the public sector also requires cross-open source community involvement nad contributions. This is one of the foundations of initiatives such as European Open Source Academy and Awards. In the end of the talk, the solution lies in approaching open source development, its infrastructure, funding, and community holistically.
From the discourse, it is easily misunderstood that sovereignty is all about the clouds and the desktops. We couldn’t, however, be more mistaken. Sovereignty is a full-stack problem where applications are just the tip of the iceberg, consisting of the operating system, kernel, drivers, and firmware.
If you are interested in learning more from Johan's keynote, explore the presentation below.
