Measuring Contribution to Open Source

Agreeing, measuring and encouraging organisational contribution to the open source ecosystem

Workshop within the framework of the Open Source Workshops for Computing and Sustainability event

Albert Borschette Conference Center, Brussels: 02 December 2022

Workshop time: 14:30-16:00 CET | Room 1A

 

Workshop Description

Open Source is a vital infrastructure to our digital world, pervading every personal device and business system we use. Both the private and public sector continue to increase their use of open source, which is a positive trend.  However, on the whole, the existence, availability and support of open source is taken for granted. Many individuals, companies, foundations and public administrations do contribute, but this is already recognised to be insufficient. 

How can we contribute to open source? Can we measure this? Are there metrics? How does a conscientious organisation know it is contributing well? Are there contribution best practices and/or league tables? With ESG, organisations will soon be measuring their environmental footprint. Should we also not measure our use of and contribution to open source? Isn’t this contribution vital to the sustainability of open source?

 

Chair

 

 Saranjit Arora

Saranjit Arora (EC OSPO)

Saranjit Arora is an open source project manager/consultant and member of the European Commission’s OSPO.  He earlier managed the highly successful EU-FOSSA 2 project, and today leads the European Parliament sponsored FOSSEPS Pilot Project. FOSSEPS aims to promote cooperation between European Public Services on open source via specific initiatives. One of these is to build an EU Applications Catalogue of business solutions built by and for the EU MS27 public administrations. Saranjit studied Mathematics and Computer Science at University of Nottingham many moons ago and has worked with the Commission for 5 years.

 

Assisted by

 

 Miguel Diez Blanco

Miguel Diez Blanco (EC OSPO Team Lead, DIGIT B3.002)

Miguel Díez Blanco is the Project Lead of the Open Source Programme Office (OSPO) at European Commission, which is the “go-between” for all activities outlined in the EC Open Source Strategy, whose main goal is to direct the organisation towards open source principles and practices. Miguel holds an MSc in Informatics Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC) and an MBA at HEC Paris School of Management.

 

Panellists

 

Bastien Guerry

Bastien Guerry (Etalab/DINUM)

Bastien Guerry is the free software officer for the French public administration.  He studied philosophy and cognitive sciences.  He got interested in the free software movement in the late 90's and taught himself how to program by contributing to GNU Emacs. In 2017, he joined the "Public Interest Entrepreneurs" program, by Etalab, the French department for open data.  There he discovered the challenges faced by public agencies when it comes to maintaining and enhancing resilient IT infrastructures, recruiting tech profiles, rationalizing the use of free software and the contributions made by the public administration to the larger free software ecosystem. 

 

 

Leslie Hawthorn

Leslie Hawthorn (Red Hat)

Leslie Hawthorn has spent her career creating and cultivating open source communities. She has driven open source strategy in Fortune 10 companies, pre-IPO startups, and Foundation Boards including senior roles at Red Hat, Google, the Open Source Initiative, and Elastic. She currently leads the vertical community strategy team within Red Hat’s Open Source Program Office. She advocates for creating citizen-centric Smart Cities underpinned by open source and open standards, and spends her spare time on tech for social good projects. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, she has called Europe home for the past seven years and resides in Bonn.  

 

 

 

Sachiko Muto
 

Sachiko Muto (OpenForumEurope)

Sachiko Muto is the Chair of OpenForum Europe and a senior researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden. She originally joined OFE in 2007 and served for several years as Director with responsibility for government relations and then as CEO. She has degrees in Political Science from the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics and has been a guest researcher at UC Berkeley and TU Delft. 

 

 

 

Timo Levi

Timo Levi (T-Systems)

Timo Levi leads the Office of the CTO at T-Systems International. In this role he manages long-term technology innovation. Prior to his role, Mr. Levi spent almost 30 years in High-Tech having worked for IBM, Ubuntu, Equinix, Solidworks and others. Mr. Levi is also deputy chairman at the Open Source Business Alliance and an active participant in Gaia-X.   

 

 

Tobie Langel

Tobie Langel (Senior Fellow, Omidyar Network)

Tobie Langel is a world-leading expert on open source and standardization. He advises some of the biggest names in tech (Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Intel, Cisco), promising startups (GitLab, Airtable, Coil), industry organizations (OpenJS Foundation, OASIS, W3C) and nonprofits (Organization for Ethical Source, Ushahidi, Omidyar Network), pro bono or through his consultancy, UnlockOpen. Tobie’s unique mix of deep technical expertise, open source and standardization street creds, thorough understanding of IP concerns, industry-wide network, and broad, business-focused strategic perspective makes him an ideal partner when growing thriving open ecosystems that balance private and public interests in pursuit of the common good. 

 

 

Italo Vignoli

Italo Vignoli (Document Foundation)

Italo Vignoli is a founding member of The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice project, the Chairman Emeritus of Associazione LibreItalia, an Ambassador of Software Heritage, and a member of Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). He is a past board member of Open Source Initiative (OSI). Italo co-leads LibreOffice marketing, PR and media relations, co-chairs the LibreOffice Certification Program, and is a spokesman for the project. He handles advocacy and marketing activities for the Open Document Format ISO standard. He has contributed to several large migration projects to LibreOffice, and is a LibreOffice certified migrator and trainer since 2014.