 So yeah, last year the summit focused on challenges. Now we've sat through a long day with a packed program focusing on opportunities and some challenges well kind of crept in there. But with this closing session let's try to synthesize see what we can get out of this. Maybe formulate a policy recommendation or two. And then before we send you off to Faustum of course and some cocktails. But let me introduce the people who will help me do this. So it's Hilary Carter from the Linux Foundation, Sachiko Muto from OFE and the Research Institutes of Sweden, Fredyks Vansum of Red Pill Limpro, Andreas Gauge of Open Exchange, and here's the tricky one, Maximilian or Max of IBM. So we'll get going straight away. Sachiko, in your view what is an open source opportunity? All right, well first let me just say that I think it was genius that you at least scheduled cocktails for after this session. So you know we're in between you and the cocktails but at least there are cocktails so people are still here some of you at least. Okay that's a that's a nice little question Astor. I think you know we and also your introduction to the session because we had a little prep call or prep meeting before this and I think we all started sort of striking out our notes, our speaking notes because we realized that there would be no chance of providing any sort of fresh content at this point. But you know, I had planned to mention the study which has been mentioned a few times already so that should have been struck out but talking about an opportunity that's a really broad question but I think it's about you know seeing that there's value in something but then also that there's an untapped potential and I just sitting here today I was thinking about okay let's let's look at this automotive panel that's going to be really exciting as a sort of way to illustrate you know the the opportunity for open source and and I really realized that you know it is both something that can illustrate a value that's already happening but also indeed the the opportunity that's still there because there are some challenges to still be to sort of be overcome still. I think but about that and really illustrating how sort of competitors can come together in a sector and really collaborate and focus on sort of innovate quickly and and and and focus the resources on sort of the top innovative layer. I think that's really the opportunity and we saw one sector but there are there are so many other sectors we can be talking about and and Hilary mentioned you know when we had that little conversation beforehand sort of you know the the entertainment industry the movie industry for example the the fashion industry you know and I think it opens some some eyes here as well because it kind of goes beyond what we are normally focusing on so and then really the opportunity it's for the public sector. I think this is something that we've been talking about for years. It's about sort of it's it's time for the public sector to also benefit from from from this way of innovating that's sort of already winning I guess in in you know in the industry and so maybe we'll talk a little bit more about that later on in the panel. Yeah and Hilary good perfect segue they they're mentioning Hilary. Last year you led the publication of the report the world of open source Europe spotlight 2022. With this analysis in mind and what you've heard to hear today what stands out for you as Europe's biggest open source opportunity you can of course pay more than one. Indeed and there are many and thank you Astor and thank you Sachiko and everyone here especially open form Europe for supporting our research and being a partner and allowing us to have a data driven approach to how we view open source and the opportunity and what I love about the research process is it identifies gaps and so we have a chance to fill them and that's why I'm so excited about where we can go from here. Excuse me and one of the areas that our research identified was that Europe was not fully realizing the value of open source in particular certain sectors certain countries lagging behind others and most of the small and medium size enterprises were not taking advantage of the open source opportunity. Apart from the industry level collaboration and new industries that as they are becoming more software defined they're capitalizing on the opportunity but what I'm most excited about is the possibility for the public sector as Sachiko mentioned to deliver citizen services at lower cost and be a model user of this technological gift which is how we tend to see it and when we can realize that vision and you know COVID was a terrific example of here is a pressing need around credentials and health or whether it's customs and border control or there's any other kind of citizen service the opportunity to develop cost effective trusted digital solutions that create efficiencies and add so much value and allow Europe to get on with the business of innovating instead of waiting in long digital lineups or waiting for things that should be efficient but are not that is the tremendous opportunity whether it's a regulatory opportunity or a public sector opportunity. I think that's where Europe has the most to gain. Businesses were mentioned and so we're turning over to Frederick and Andreas and annoyingly enough I'll give you a joint question so you kind of will have to decide who answers first. So moving away from the innovation model itself and opportunities that comes from that what would you say is the state of the European open source industry what opportunities do we see in terms of innovation, new jobs, economic growth, growing your companies. Is it a good time to be an open source company? Wow that's a large question Astur. First of all I would like to sort of summarize what's been said already today. There are lots of opportunities with open source software and open code. Many of them have already been mentioned but I would like to emphasize again that talking about the digital sovereignty for instance I would like to say I would like to think that open source is the solution to that. I mean with open source open code you can choose how to deploy the software. You can make sure that your GDP are compliant and all the stuff that comes with that. But furthermore open source also creates an option to invest in software building software creation in Europe and I also think it makes it possible to create a lively and productive software community in Europe that will enable both sort of innovation today but also future innovation because if investments in digitization, if they stay that money stays in Europe, that creates a foundation for further investment and further innovation. And to your question Astur, it is a good time to be an open source company in Europe today. There's a lot of requests for competence and knowledge and as a open source system integrator company we are making sure that if there is demand there will also be supply for experienced and talented developers working with open source software. Yeah I can only agree it is much easier to attract talent if you have an open source background so if you are on a positive side of karma for sure. But we also shouldn't forget that there is large companies dominating big parts of this industry and the only way I see how Europe can kind of get back on track and be competitive with that is open source. Like collaborating, openness, speed, innovation that comes all from open source and the only things that break monopolies are governments, technical disruption and open source. So Max, now I'm trying to go through the full panel with annoyingly big and difficult questions but so Fredrik and Andreas talked about the business opportunities. Now let's pivot back to the technology. What is the role of open source today would you say in the development of like tomorrow's technologies? You're involved in these things? Yes. So obviously a very broad question as you said. I'll start by maybe quoting a famous European who said that if you could only see further than most people and it's because he was standing on the shoulders of giants, he just happens to be on an island of Europe but anyway, we all know Isaac Newton's famous quote. I think it sort of summarizes for me what open source brings which is that it brings a foundation that you can build on top. And it's a foundation you don't want to recreate. So as an example of this, I'll give you three different examples, one in the past that I experienced, one in the present that I'm experiencing and one I believe that's going to come or it's coming in the future. So in the past, a lot of you probably old enough to remember when USB or universal serial bus came about. So all those devices that you plug into your laptops, there was a time when these were new. And in order for you to use most of those devices that would come like cameras, mice, etc., you had to have a driver and you had to wait for the operating system that you're using to have the right driver, etc. And it would take time. You could buy a device and then you couldn't use it, like especially hard drives, for instance. And what I remember at the time, we were coming up at IBM with new devices. And I needed to have those working on machines. And very quickly, we were able to build those because we built our solution on Linux. And why did that work is because we had access to the code. And Linux had an initial driver for USB. And you could come in and bring your own device and could the driver for USB. So this is an example of how open source allows you to create innovation very quickly. You don't have to wait for the next release of the operating system, which would usually take like two years before USB was available for it. So that's one example in the past. In the present, an example of this is cloud. If you're going to build anything related to cloud right now, it'd be foolish, almost crazy, to think that you could build your own stack. You just go and use what exists right now, which is a Linux Kubernetes stack. And it's a huge amount of code that works. And not only works, it works at scale. So if you're going to build something for the cloud, build on top of that. And then the last thing I'll mention is that now I'm one of my mission is open quantum. If you want to play in that field, you want to start adding, you know, experiment with quantum computers, you're going to build it with an open stack, not only for the cloud, but also, for instance, with Kiskit, which is an open source toolkit build using Python. And then chasm, which is an open source definition of how to actually talk to those quantum computers. So I think the basic thing is, if you think you're smart enough, and you can build your own code and build it fast enough to release it in time, then I've added or use what exists that works and is stable. So that's the future is open source. I just don't see any other way, if you want to do it in the time that we think. I mean, so but then I'm thinking we're here, it's an open forum Europe event, we have a panel, we're more or less concluded that open source is pretty good. But so I'm trying to think, not the great surprise that's the quote for this event, right? Open source. It's pretty good. But so let's try to identify and get to like some policy changes needed. Like what can we do? And as I see it, I'm trying to like summarize, well, kind of off the top of my head, but I've also taken some notes from today. Firstly, it will be important for us to safeguard the innovation model and make sure that open source maintain, you know, stays frictionless, right? Secondly, there's policy aimed at allowing the European open source software industry to grow. We will need that capacity to have that capacity in the industry to meet and realize these opportunities. And then thirdly, I think there is a need of policies or even regulation that lowers the barriers for open alternatives to compete. I think these are kind of three main groupings of policy approaches if we're talking about, especially let's say the European Union and what could be done. But so to make this a bit more concrete, and the questions are not going to get easier. Andreas, if you were to advise a government, and I mean a national government, how they should approach creating a national strategy for open source. And this is for a nation, not a city, not a company, not an industry, the country. How should they go about it? What should the goals be? Oh, that's an easy question. So I would say, first of all, you know, I think one of the main goals for any government should be that data sovereignty is actually happening. And so the opposite of sovereignty is dependency. So first thing I would say is make sure that all the important parts of your infrastructure are not depending on one single whatever company or something, right? It should be interchangeable. There should be minimum two options for anything so that you can kind of move on, decide and dependent if something goes wrong, if one of the things doesn't work anymore, there should be another thing that can replace it. And then secondly, especially for smaller companies and open source companies tend to be smaller than the big ones, right? There are some exceptions. Make a stable playing field. Decide for standards. Don't create standards. Decide for existing ones, right? Only if you can't do other, create one, but there's plenty there. So decide for standards, cement them that people can rely on them, building stuff based on them and also force anyone in the market to support them. And thirdly, don't only listen to companies or organizations. There is two groups you should also talk to. And the first and the most important one is developers, right? Developers can easily tell you if a standard or anything you want to do regarding to your infrastructure makes sense or not. Much more direct and much more easy than any kind of like people that have an agenda and typically companies tend to have a very strong agenda. So not a good source for information. And also users, you know, once you have built something and you're proud of it, be only proud of it, if the users that have to use it are happy with it. It's also very certainly done, especially before release. So yeah, I think these little three rules would be super helpful. I know it's very pragmatic, but I'm a pragmatic guy. Yeah, Fredrik. Yeah, if I may add to that, I think trying to raise it up a level, as you said, we have concluded open source is pretty good. So I would say if I was a country or a national agency or even the EU, I would implement a policy that says that you should always evaluate open source projects or software before you make a purchasing decision. And if there is a viable open source project out there, always choose that. And thirdly, all publicly financed or funded development should always be open source and you should be able to reuse it for other organizations that are also public. And I think it's on the fifth on my list now, create a space where all the publicly funded development can be shared with others. There are five bullets that I would like to send with an include in a national or EU policy. And then lastly, make it easy to buy services related to open source software. So create like a framework agreement that are either influenced by open source or where you include vendors that can help you with open source based solutions and services that makes it easy for public sector organizations primarily to use and to buy services related to open source. I think those things will make it easier for public sector organizations within the EU to buy and use open source software and related services. Hilary, looks like you want to say something. I would only add, this is a phenomenal list, Frederick, I would add if I were advising government and although I am from Canada, I have Irish citizenship, so I would approach government of Ireland first and foremost is requiring open source development skills training earlier in the education system so that Europe has a workforce that is skilled for the digital economy for the open source software infrastructure. Because as my colleague would say and I heard Gail Blundell from Eclipse Foundation saying we have to raise our skills and our communities and our talent pools. We cannot hire our way out of the digital transformation imperative. We must raise the skill level among our citizens. So I would add that educational component as being baseline and start earlier. And I feel, didn't the Deputy Prime Minister say that 2023 is the year of skills? Let's add it. But Sachiko, I see you want to say something, but I'll formulate it as a question and then you can take it as you want. I'll say whatever I was planning to say anyway. But this is also ideas as an organization with an agenda. So if I hope you will listen to some of the information that we have to say as well, Sachiko, you know OFE really well. We have worked for 20 years to level the playing field for open source alternatives. But here we are still. How would you say, what is the state of play for the alternatives? Is the playing field level? So this is when I, OK, so well, 20 years you said I've been there for 15 of those years. And to some extent, it's clear that things have, a lot of things have changed, right? And so and OFE has also come a long way and asked our congratulations on the event. I think it's been really great. Paola of course also, but and the rest of the team. But I think that, you know, that's a reflection also of how far, you know, open source has come and we have kind of grown alongside of that. But I think one thing that hasn't changed, you know, open source is eating the world, open source is one, all of that. But it struck me that one conversation where we haven't moved very much is actually on procurement. And you didn't say, you know, you didn't use the words procurement, but that's what you're what you're talking about. And I think this has been, it's, I really think that we need to make some progress there. But at the same time, I don't want to say that we haven't made progress because indeed we heard from the deputy prime minister and after that in the public sector panel, actually some important practical, you know, projects that are moving forward. And I think it's important there that that we sort of, you know, what they said also in that panel, like let's let's build on each other's experience. Let's sort of share between governments experiences and things like that. And I think I'm hoping, you know, you had an ambitious list there. I do hope that the Interoperable Europe Act, which introduces some, it's not just words because that was one thing that was also deployed, I think, by some some speakers in previous panels that, you know, we've had some very positive ministerial declarations, you know, like there's the talent declaration, there's the Berlin declaration, you know, all these declarations and where it's easier to just to celebrate like, oh, now it's going to be like open by default or something like that. All the ministers have signed, you know, it's it's the Interoperable Europe Act does propose some specific sort of first structures, but also things like an agenda, you know, an Interoperable Europe agenda, where we're going to hopefully see at the European level, you know, a listing of priorities of this sort of the type of interoperable in e-government solutions that are needed. And even it proposes the possibility of developing some of these technologies at the European level. And I really foresee, like if this could work like that, you know, opportunities also for for European SMEs to work at sort of the regional or local or national level to sort of help governments further develop and and and customize those shared solutions and then also being able to sort of bring that back to to to Europe. Yeah, so I mean, I'm not sure that answer the question, but it was more less what I wanted to say. So and here, Max, I'm going to put you on the spot. Yeah. Simply following Andreas's recommendation, we should talk more to the developers. What do you think? What is your take then? Any reactions on the things that are coming from very much the developers point of view? What would you be looking for? Yeah, so I guess as a developer, the thing I would tell people is that well, two things. So first is building software is hard. What I mean by this is you can all build very trivial piece of software, right? It's, you know, everybody goes to a class, you take a class, you can build stuff, you know, simple things. But that doesn't matter, right? Building large piece of software is very hard and building it so that it scales is even harder. What do I mean by this? If you just go by the fact that the code has to be written, sort of like a language, you're writing a novel and you have to type it, right? So you think, OK, let's say we're going to build, you know, a cloud software and you think, OK, how much code is that? Something like Kubernetes is in the millions of lines of code. And it scales. And that's why. So if you were to build it with a team, imagine how long it would just take to type. And that's not even a team that knows what they're doing, just to type it. You can see how long it would take. Now, that's just to create it. Once you have the software created, it has to scale. So you now have to think about how do you scale it? And that's just the beginning of it because you also have to maintain it. So as developers, there's a series of things you have to do. And maintenance is dealing with security like what a previous panel was talking about. And those things come up all the time. So as a developer, that's what we need, right? Is the whole lifecycle is dealing with the creation, the getting it to work so it's correct testing it, then scaling it. Then it's in the public and you have to essentially now maintain it. All of that takes time. When you're in a community, when you have a community around the software, such as an open source, it makes it a lot easier to deal with all these steps. And I think that's the key is that as developers, building that community, being part of a community helps and open source makes it much better than if you have it in private organization. I've worked in both and I can tell you it's a lot more fun, less stress and a lot easier to have a community. And the last thing I will say is that I hate to tell you this. They are usually smarter people that are not working in your organization. Except for our organization. That's just the way it is. And I've seen it repeated over and over again and they come from all over the world. So, you know, when you have open source, you can hopefully tap into that. But then it feels like I'm trying to, like, everyone seems to have come back in one way or another to this kind of skills, competence, like having a skilled workforce question. And I'm going to see if I can force that into the last question here and then it will be open up for reactions. But so Andreas and Frederick, I'll start with you again because I do talk quite often to open source entrepreneurs, business owners, et cetera. And my earlier question was quite leading about, like, how is it to be because, be an open source entrepreneur today? Because when I talk to them, they're very busy. There is quite some demand and, you know, meeting the demand is a challenge, but it's there. And for the kind of opportunities and the promises that we have listed here today, we would need quite a lot to meet those. So can the industry meet this promise, this demand? Are you ready? Yeah, I've checked GPT, so they will do all the development for me. I heard, I guess, I don't know. No, it's difficult, certainly. But I think if you are a smaller company and you have a positive karma open source agenda, it's much more easy to find people and for large companies with maybe a negative karma agenda. So this is not our major problem. Our major problem is still that it's quite tricky to make money with open source. I know we are all growing and it's work somehow, but it's trickier, much trickier than just being the only one who can supply it and putting a price tag on it. If you innovate, there's people that download it and just use it. Do you mean that it's a lot easier to kind of have a monopoly position than being exposed to a lot of competition? A monopoly position is the easiest there is, right? But also, you know, you can create a product and build, you're innovative. You have an innovative product and you are the only one who is supplying it. It's much easier to make money with it than you have an open source project or you make it open source and then there's a whole ecosystem that uses it for free and there's other companies that use it, that make even money with it. It's just more difficult. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's more difficult. So that is something all open source companies think about day in, day out. I can promise you that. Yeah, it sounds like open source companies are exposed to a lot of competition. But usually you're pretty good. Fredrik. Yeah, from my perspective, I'm representing an open source solutions provider or systems integrator. And as from my perspective, open source has always attracted top talent. So we have really skilled people working for us. And of course, they can share their skills with ambitious and eager people to learn. So I think that's one way of approaching the issue, making sure that we have a program to sort of skill up people and to further expand the workforce that way. Another way we do that we do here in Europe is that we cooperate with our peers. There are other companies, my company's based in out of Scandinavia. We have other companies based out of Germany, France and so forth. And we do have a collaboration with them. So we collaborate and we learn from each other. And if we need to scale a project in Scandinavia, I know who to turn to. And I hoping that my peers in France and Germany also know that they can turn to me for assistance if they need to scale up for projects. Is there any kind of public policy, legal framework or something that could improve and help and increase that collaboration? This is really of putting you on the spot. Yeah, no matter. But I think I have an answer to that. I think I also mentioned that. I mean, it would make our life easier if there was like a framework agreement in place or that made it easier for public sector organizations to start with when they want to purchase services related to open source software. Definitely. So if there is a framework agreement in place that is either influenced by the willingness to use open source software or even implies that you need to use open source software that would make it easy for public sector organizations to purchase the services they require. Well, it's good. I'm thinking like, you know, reading the the archives of OFE over the last 20 years. In some ways, everything is different. And in some ways, everything is still the same. So it's good. I have a French. Yeah, yeah. And I have things to do for the next coming years. It seems like we haven't solved everything. But just I'm thinking now I'm just improvising here. But just some last words from each one of you and make them positive and energetic so we have something inspiring to talk about during the cocktail. Hillary first. That's easy. Thank you. My favorite idea is this notion of leadership and who will lead us to where we need to go? Who is a special person from an industry from a non-governmental organization who will rally the leaders and the change makers? Because I think my theory of digital transformation is one of leadership. But it comes down to people who are willing to take a career bet and have the courage of their convictions. And that's what I think is going to be the magical formula that helps build out the open source opportunity in Europe. Is that your no preparation? Asking me to be upbeat, you know. There are a couple of people who said that they're half was it glass half full and then Katerina. She said she's optimistic person. I think it like I said, I think there are some very positive messages today. I think we should go back and listen to the to the opening sort of key note as well, because I think there are a lot of a lot of good things in there. I didn't have a chance to get back to you on the skills thing. I think it is important and I think it's important to some of the things that came out of here is that, you know, the developers, the top talent, they want they prefer to work on open source. And I think that's important for Europe if we want to to attract and keep the top talent. I think it was Mirko that said, you know, open source reduces redundant effort. You know, nobody wants to be doing a redundant effort. You know, and I think Max, you you kind of elaborated on this a lot, and I think that's really powerful. And, you know, I think often in Europe, we talk also about not wanting to be like we wanted to we want to be at the cutting edge. And really, that's what, you know, open source provides the opportunity for. And often we see 27 replications. So Frederick. Yes, this panelist about the opportunities with open source and there are many opportunities, of course. But I think my favorite one is to use open source to fuel a lively and productive software creation community in Europe. Let's make sure that tech innovation happens here both now but also in the future. And I think that's the sort of main opportunity for us living in Europe with open source. Thank you for taking mine away. Humans are successful because they collaborate, right? That is one of the main reasons why they are so successful. And open source is a very successful form of collaboration, right? Like worldwide, diverse, no borders. Do you think there's a better anything that is actually better than open source when it comes to collaboration? I don't think so. So we are spearheading the future of humanity, let's say like that. How do I follow this? Well, maybe I'll give I'll add to it by giving you some very specific examples. So the last work that I did now I'm engaging into open quantum. But the last work that I did was in K-native, which is a layer on top of Kubernetes to make it serverless. So that started at Google and I believe Google in Seattle, most the American engineers. Then various groups started being involved, especially Red Hat in Germany. Then more folks from the U.S. But there's also quite a bit of collaboration right before the pandemic from China. We had lots of engineers in China adding to it. And then now you have folks from Japan doing big contribution to it. And then also more of the rest of Europe. So in other words, exactly what you said is that it's a human endeavor and I'm seeing more and more contribution coming also from different parts of the world that you haven't seen in the past, like for instance from Africa. And that's the beauty of open source is that it opens it up from the rest of the world and you get people that are contributing from places that you would never expect because they want to use it. And we have a Slack channel and there are people responding and you have GitHub issues that you can open and people can discuss. So really the only thing you need to kind of know is to be able to speak English a little bit. And that's it. Yeah, I guess we all know that top talent is out there and often and not in the groups that you think it's going to be in there just all over the place. But then I guess also just now, of course, I'm hijacking the end here because I'm the session leader, but I want to thank all of you for joining. But before I get off stage, because I know that I'm keeping you from going to the cocktail, I really want to thank the OFE team for putting everything and all of this together. And especially Paula, before I get off stage, they spend eight hours or something like that moderating. Thank you very much and thank you for joining. And now I think Paula has some final words and then I'll meet you out there for a drink. Bye, everyone. Thank you, Astor. Thank you, everyone. I was really thinking what to say at the end. I took so many notes, but to be honest, just this quote, we are spearheading the future of humanity. I think this is a good start for the cocktails. But having said that, thank you very much for coming. Thank you to all the speakers for sharing your insights with us. I think we have a lot of food for thought. I hope that you're coming to FOSDEM. Take a look, especially at the legal and policy track. We will be there just hanging out, so let's see each other. But I want to say thank you to OFE team, to the tech team here on site. Yeah, you hosted us very well. And I hope to see you next year, probably in a larger group. Let's see how we do it and for how long. See you there and enjoy the cocktail.