Global collaboration and Europe's digital sovereignty goals: debate
UA2.118 (Henriot) | Day 2 | 09:05 - 09:35 | Speakers: Thierry Carrez, Vittorio Bertola, Gabriele Columbro, Paula Grzegorzewska
Abstract
European digital sovereignty is moving from slogan to strategy. Faced with dependencies and in line with its resilience goals, the EU increasingly turns to open source as a pillar of its technological autonomy. Yet the debate often stalls on the questions: Where is software “made”? Who “owns” the code? And can sovereignty be achieved simply by adopting European-labelled alternatives? - all questions that often are not compatible with how open source actually works, and potentially leading to missing out on the vast potential of the global OS ecosystem for Europe.
In this panel, the speakers will focus not on trying to define “European open source” but on the fact that sovereignty is less about origin or ownership than about capability, participation, and influence. Drawing on perspectives from the industry and SMEs, as well as the global open source ecosystem, the discussion will focus on the future-looking (and pragmatic) idea of interdependent autonomy: where strategic independence is strengthened, not weakened, by deep engagement in global open source communities.
- What is the most omitted in digital sovereignty discussions, and should not be?
- If you were to point to one action that Europe should focus on in the next 10 years for its digital sovereignty, what would it be?
- What should open source foundations do in order to strengthen this interdependence, while not hampering EU’s goals of supporting its own, homegrown industry?
- How can European companies build viable business models on open technologies without retreating into protectionism or undermining global collaboration?
Speakers
Thierry Carrez is the General Manager of the OpenInfra Foundation. A systems engineer by trade, he was involved in the inception of the OpenStack project, and still contributes to its governance and release management.
With a personal interest in the intersection of sociology and technology, Thierry is a renowned speaker on open innovation and open source. He was recognized as a Python Software Foundation fellow in 2012, and currently acts as vice-chair for the Open Source Initiative.
Vittorio Bertola is an engineer, policy expert and activist, currently running the innovation and policy activities at Open-Xchange, a global leader in open source email and DNS platforms, maker of Dovecot and PowerDNS. In the past, he founded startups, campaigns, Usenet newsgroups and political parties, served on the Board of ICANN and on United Nations Internet governance groups, published an essay on Internet geopolitics, bugged the European Parliament to open up the walled gardens, wrote unnecessarily complex Perl scripts, and argued online with a lot of people on a lot of things.
As founding Executive Director, Gabriele Columbro has played a pivotal role in transforming the Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS) from its nascent stages into a leading force in the financial services sector, fostering significant growth and innovation through open source collaboration. Under his leadership, FINOS, now part of the Linux Foundation, has expanded to over 100 members, including major financial institutions and technology firms and became the host of open source projects now critical to the financial services ecosystem. Columbro has also been instrumental in establishing and promoting key industry events such as the Open Source in Finance Forum (OSFF), that have become central hubs for open source in finance bringing together over 2000 people every year.
Besides OSFF, Columbro is also a frequent keynote speaker at major events like Open Source Summit, Money 2020, Finovate, and KubeCon, where he advocates on the transformative impact of open source technology in various sectors, first and foremost financial services.
Thanks to his accomplishments with FINOS, Columbro was tapped to take on a significant role as the General Manager of Linux Foundation Europe, aimed at enhancing the presence and impact of open source across Europe. This role involves fostering regional open collaborations and supporting the success leveraging the global platform of the Linux Foundation, emphasizing the critical commercial, geopolitical and societal value of open source in the AI era and beyond.
His extensive experience in building developer ecosystems and driving innovation is not just limited to non-profits but extends to commercial open source ventures and direct exposure Fortune 500 companies, highlighted by his previous roles at Alfresco.
Beyond his professional achievements, as a special needs parent, Columbro advocates for disability rights and inclusion. He is an avid reggae music connoisseur, enjoys cooking strictly Italian food, and it's a vocal Napoli soccer fan, a sport he enjoys also playing in his personal time. Columbro holds a Master's in Computer Engineering at Università of Roma Tre in Italy.
Paula Grzegorzewska is a Senior Manager, Strategic Partnerships at the Linux Foundation Europe. Her expertise revolves around digital policy and open source software, as well as digital transformation of European public services. Previously, she worked in a leading Brussels-based think tank focused on open technologies and policy, where she led its engagement with European and global partners stemming from government, academia, not-for-profits and international institutions. She is a co-author of the 2021 European Commission’s study on the economic impact of open source software and hardware and other policy research reports. She also worked on closing the gender gap in ICT with an NGO in Luxembourg, and has a Master’s degree in New Media and Communications from Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Links
External Links
Notice: The placeholder video image is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. The original image can be found hereChanges made to the image are: Cropped the image to a new ratio, part of the image was cut off.