The 10-year anniversary of the OpenForum Europe’s EU Open Source Policy Summit is taking place on 2 February 2024, just before FOSDEM. The Summit is the world’s largest assembly of policymakers, Open Source businesses, community members, developers, foundations, and experts engaged in digital policy.

The overarching policy message of this conference is an important one: strategic use of open technologies and Open Source in particular play an important role in solving digital policy challenges. The opportunities “openness” brings come in the form of decreasing vendor lock-in, increasing the resilience of the systems in question, while also boosting competition and innovation.

Open Source has reached the level of policy maturity that brought significant attention to topics relating to open technologies in the Cyber Resilience Act and the AI Act, the need for openness for interoperability in the Interoperable Europe Act, and other policy initiatives around the globe.

Policymakers once viewed Open Source as a niche, hobby activity. Now, Open Source is everywhere and there’s a strong will to connect and discuss the current and critical issues of digital with stakeholders. The EU Open Source Policy Summit is a place where policymakers expect to hear the voices of the most innovative drivers of the change to open.

Take a look at the sessions and recordings from the 2023 Summit. More details about the 10-year anniversary will be presented in the coming months.