Critical OS Software

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.

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.  

Camille Moulin (Inno3)

Camille has been an Open Source and Open Standards advocate for quite a few years now; he is currently working as a consultant at Inno³, a French niche consultancy specialized in all things Open from an IP & organisational point of view, where he focuses on legal compliance and FOSS sustainability issues. 

Dirk-Willem van Gulik (Founder and first president of the Apache Software Foundation)

Dirk-Willem van Gulik is one of the internet engineers behind the world wide web. He is one of the founding fathers of the apache web server He was the President of the Apache Software Foundation during its first 10 years. He has worked for the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, the United Nations, telecommunications firms, several satellite & space agencies and founded several startups. He participated in different international standards bodies on Architecture and Internet standard since the early days. He build helped build first ‘webserver’ startup: Covalent, made big-data and the semantic web reality at Asemantics and created the first  first instant play P2P viewer at joost.com. He was the Chief Technical Architect at the BBC at the time of the olympics. Most recently has assisted the Ministry of Health of the Netherlands with the `CoronaMelder'; where opensource, cryptography and security-by-design helped build trust. When not at work, he loves to sail or hang out at the local MakerspaceLeiden.nl. 

Gaël Blondelle (Eclipse foundation)

Gaël Blondelle is passionate about open source software and open source ecosystems. He joined the Eclipse Foundation in 2013 and now serves as Chief Membership Officer. He has been involved in the open source arena for more than 18 years in a number of key roles. Gaël co-founded an open source start-up and worked as its Chief Technology Officer. Gaël then worked in business development for an open source systems integration company, helping to expand their customer base. Gaël also managed highly strategic research IT projects aiming to create open source ecosystems for major industrial players – including the likes of Airbus, Thales and Ericsson. Gaël joined the Eclipse Foundation to pursue his goal of helping more companies work in open source, and to implement open, innovative and collaborative eco-systems for mission-critical applications. Gaël is a known advocate of the benefits of open source and he is a sought-after keynote speaker at global industry events. Originally from Champagne (France), Gaël is a Computer Science graduate of TELECOM Nancy. Now based in Toulouse, he enjoys travel, hiking, as well as spending time with his family. 

Michiel Leenaars (NLnet Foundation)

Michiel Leenaars (1972, Netherlands) is Director of Strategy at NLnet foundation, a public benefit organisation established in the eighties by some of the early pioneers of the European Internet. He currently leads the NGI Zero research programmes, part of the Next Generation Internet initiative. He is active in a number of national and international organisations, such as The Commons Conservancy (chair), OpenDoc Society (vice-chair), SIDN Fund (Board of Advisors), Digitale Infrastructuur Nederland, and Petities.nl foundation (treasurer). 

Roman Shaposhnik (VP of Legal affairs, Apache Software Foundation)

Roman is an open source software expert and entrepreneur, currently serving on the board of directors at The Apache Software Foundation. He is a co-founder and the CTO for Zededa, an edge virtualization startup. Throughout his career, Roman has held technical leadership roles at several well-known companies, including Sun Microsystems, Yahoo!, Cloudera and Pivotal Software. He holds a master’s degree in mathematics and computer science from St. Petersburg State University. 

Peter Ganten (Univention, OSBA)

Peter Ganten is Managing Director of Univention GmbH, an internationally active manufacturer of an open source platform for identity management, application integration and end-user portals, which he founded in 2002. He is also co-founder and, since 2011, Chairman of the Board of the Open Source Business Alliance. There, he dedicates himself as a stakeholder and idea provider to a new generation of information technology that can be co-designed and controlled by developers, operators and user organizations in the spirit of digital sovereignty. Peter Ganten is active as a member, advisor and expert in various other bodies such as APELL.