OpenForum Academy Symposium

Speakers and attendees will be welcomed to the event during this time, during which coffee and light refreshments will be provided.

Opening remarks for the day will be provided by OpenForum Europe (OFE) and the Harvard Business School.

Keynote remarks by Prof. Brian Fitzgerald.

Despite the paradox of open source software – high quality software that is freely available – the success of the open source model has been staggering over the past 25 years, to the extent that estimates suggest 96% of commercial software packages today include open source software components. This success has spurred interest in other open phenomena – open data, open science and open innovation, for example. This talk will consider the history of open source and will consider factors which led to this success. Also, as open source has matured beyond the teenage years, it faces a different context, one which surfaces new challenges.

Thematic Block 1:
Funding and Open Source

The predominant FOSS funding model provides five to low six figures to a specific project, often to support short-term staffing to improve a code base or pipeline. Occasionally, funding will be allocated to a community manager for a particular period. Sometimes, these funds will have a medium—to long-term impact on the project, but they often only provide a short-term benefit to the project or its community. This paper points to several openly-published and freely-distributed work to encourage projects to make use of them, in order to create and strengthen community and to encourage funders to consider supporting community development efforts like POSE to think beyond the single project model.

This paper studies the involvement of the Mozilla Corporation in the Rust programming language ecosystem. Mozilla incubated Rust and employed a significant number of the language’s core developers up until summer 2020, when a strategic reorganization led to a significant downsizing of these developers. It exploits this shock to study how centralized sponsorship of an entire ecosystem, and its withdrawal, influences the behavior of different kinds of contributors: Mozilla developers themselves, other highly active developers, casual contributors, and new developers.

Coffee break with drinks and light refreshments served to attendees.

Governmental involvement in funding the development and maintenance of open source software (OSS) has increased significantly in recent years, driven by goals such as enhancing software security, economic growth, and national competitiveness in science and innovation. However, the impact of funding remains poorly understood, and there is a lack of consensus on how to effectively measure impact. This paper addresses this gap by discussing methodological considerations and reflections from our experience of developing methodologies for the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative, the Sovereign Tech Fund (STF), and the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software (CHAOSS) project.

The OSS world misses predictable, stable, long-term funding sources. A new original approach to resolving this issue could be adopting the private endowment fund model used by top research universities like Stanford, Oxford or Carnegie Mellon. Endowments typically invest all received donations into a conservative portfolio, spending only a portion of the annual investment returns. This paper explores the potential of applying the endowment model to sustainably fund open source. It examines specifics on how this model, successfully employed not only for universities but also by cultural and religious institutions, can be adapted to systematically support OSS maintenance and complement its existing funding landscape.

This Q&A panel will allow attendees the chance to engage in conversation with the paper presenters and to dive into some of the key questions behind the research they have presented.

Lunch will be provided onsite to the attendees.

Keynote remarks by Dr. Henry Chesbrough, as part of a fireside chat.

Best known as the “father of Open Innovtion, Dr. Chesbrough is the founding Faculty Director of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. In this fireside chat, he will reflect on how the idea of ‘open’ has evolved over the past 25 years, where it might go in the next 25 years, and also how it will have an important role to play in the surging phenomenon of LLMs in artificial intelligence.

Thematic Block 3:
Open Source Economics

This paper seeks to define and operationalize a method of identifying open source software innovation in discrete units, thus offering interdisciplinary scholars and policy stakeholders a new, complementary measure to patents, papers, and standards. Increasingly efforts measure open source software collaboration activity (GitHub 2023) and its impact (Blind et al. 2021). The methodology uses publicly available data from GitHub, leveraging software developers’ publication of packages and others developers’ decisions to adopt the software.

Open source software and digital tools are a collaborative and altruistic effort by a motivated community with an impact driven mindset. However, the economic and political impact is difficult to reach from informal community structures where there is minimal governance structure designed for those types of impacts. This paper presents new findings on these dynamics, using data collected from the European Parliament and European Commission, and other countries such Malaysia, Lithuania, and Nigeria.

Coffee break with drinks and light refreshments served to attendees.

Governments are considering data-sharing policies like open data and data portability to promote innovation, productivity, and competition. While economic research on the benefits and trade-offs of these measures is advancing, the politics behind adopting such legislation remains unclear. So, why do firms support or oppose data-sharing mandates? This paper investigates this phenomenon using public consultations on the EU Data Act, examining whether data-sharing preferences stem from certain firms’ characteristics, such as the quantity of data they own or their position on the “data value chain”.

This papers closes the ambiguity gap by operationalizing software supply chains. It describes how open source supply chains can be empirically observed as comprising the people and technology involved in producing open source products — the constructions through which work is coordinated in open source. It aims to help make the ‘bewildering complexity’ of open source supply chains more approachable for researchers through methods to improve empirical precision of open source software supply chains as a construct under investigation.

This Q&A panel will allow attendees the chance to engage in conversation with the paper presenters and to dive into some of the key questions behind the research they have presented.

Attendees will have time to transition into our breakout rooms.

We will hold breakout rooms to discuss the future of open source research.

• Breakout 1: Funding for research and the research agenda for funders
• Breakout 2: Increasing publication and dissemination opportunities for open source researchers
• Breakout 3: More and better data for open source research

This session will offer closing remarks for the day from the conference organisers.

Drinks and light snacks will be served at Charlie’s Kitchen, just off Harvard Square.

Speakers and attendees will be welcomed to the event during this time, during which coffee and light refreshments will be provided.

Opening remarks for the day will be provided by OpenForum Europe (OFE) and the Harvard Business School.

Keynote remarks by Prof. Brian Fitzgerald.

Despite the paradox of open source software – high quality software that is freely available – the success of the open source model has been staggering over the past 25 years, to the extent that estimates suggest 96% of commercial software packages today include open source software components. This success has spurred interest in other open phenomena – open data, open science and open innovation, for example. This talk will consider the history of open source and will consider factors which led to this success. Also, as open source has matured beyond the teenage years, it faces a different context, one which surfaces new challenges.

Thematic Block 2:
Diversifying Open Source

Open source software has a notorious diversity problem. Women’s participation in OSS development is significantly lower than that of industry (10% compared to 30% of programmers). Multiple studies have highlighted women’s lower participation levels in OSS and their barriers to entry, and more recent studies have begun to expand to other underrepresented groups, such as Black and Hispanic contributors. To understand the state of the literature on diversity, equity, and inclusion in OSS, this papers conducts a literature review to coalesce findings and recommendations. It takes a broader definition of diversity, analyzing almost 200 papers, of which about 100 discussed diversity in OSS. The paper presents the coding scheme, as well as future directions for researchers and OSS practitioners, communities, and advocates.

The historical global allocation of economic development and humanitarian funding favours Western organizations despite priorities intended to support low income countries with the greatest economic and disaster risks. Local data economies led by local cross-sector communities and free and open source geospatial tools present a more equitable and self-sustaining model to rapidly address longstanding gender, jobs and climate gaps, with improved scientific and implementation methods that produce direct economic, social and climate impacts to local
communities starting at 3 months. The results of five simultaneous World Bank studies on open
governance, open mapping, gender gap mapping, infrastructure and logistics across six provinces in conflict areas present opportunities to institutionalize local data economies to transform research, funding, policy, and program design into direct impact models.

Coffee break with drinks and light refreshments served to attendees.

This paper considers how the binary of North v South has shaped States’ ‘technology transfer’ as it pertains to OSS – and whether this approach is appropriate and effective in democratising access. It does so through a systematic review of extant technology transfer provisions, observing that the divide between North and South in applying ‘technology transfer’ to OSS requires further reflection (and revision) regarding States’ conduct. It also makes the case for how critical it is to move beyond simplistic North v South and State-centric models, especially as OSS is an increasingly widespread transboundary project and it analyses how the language of international law vis-a-vis technology transfer may pay heed to OSS’ distinctive mode of development and operation.

This Q&A panel will allow attendees the chance to engage in conversation with the paper presenters and to dive into some of the key questions behind the research they have presented.

Lunch will be provided onsite to the attendees.

Keynote remarks by Dr. Henry Chesbrough, as part of a fireside chat.

Best known as the “father of Open Innovtion, Dr. Chesbrough is the founding Faculty Director of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. In this fireside chat, he will reflect on how the idea of ‘open’ has evolved over the past 25 years, where it might go in the next 25 years, and also how it will have an important role to play in the surging phenomenon of LLMs in artificial intelligence.

Thematic Block 4:
Open Source for the Public Sector

This study, commissioned by the European Commission, delves into the structural configurations and strategic utilisation of Open Source Programme Offices (OSPOs) within the public sector domain, with a specific focus on OSPOs within European Union (EU) member states, Norway, Liechtenstein, and Iceland. The investigation is based on interviews conducted with 18 OSPO representatives across 16 cases. The study classifies OSPOs into six distinct archetypes, providing insights into their organisational structures, responsibilities, and contributions to the adoption of OSS. It also highlights the challenges encountered by OSPOs and provides recommendations for both policymakers and practitioners.

The potential for open source software (OSS) to drive digital transformation in the public sector is increasingly recognized in both academic literature and political endorsements. However, there is a significant gap in systematic studies that identify the precise drivers for developing effective strategies, best-practice benchmarks, and follow-up mechanisms. This study aims to bridge this gap by examining the role of OSS in digitally mature countries. The research presents findings from a qualitative survey conducted across 16 countries, selected for their high performance in digital government and administration based on major international digital maturity indices.

Coffee break with drinks and light refreshments served to attendees.

This paper asks the fundamental question: “Why aren’t state and other sub-federal governments in the U.S. adopting Digital Public Goods (DPGs) to improve public service delivery?” In response, it explores the existence and deployment of globally reusable DPGs in government contexts, with the focus extended to understanding the governance structures and financial sustainability of DPGs. To achieve this, the researchers collected and curated an open dataset, and supplemented it with a paper. The findings underscore the availability of diverse solutions to meet evolving citizen expectations, and emerging trends amid the varied governance structures of DPGs. This dataset and paper are intended to support the growing DPG discourse and provide an evidence-based foundation for enhancing public service delivery with DPG adoption for all interested parties, specifically across state and other sub-federal governments in the United States.

This paper reviews existing literature on digital commons and public digital infrastructure, emphasizing current debates about potential fields of public digital infrastructure. Through five case studies, the paper highlights approaches addressing infrastructure gaps and deepens the understanding of how digital commons can sustain and enhance public digital infrastructure. The case studies demonstrate the nuanced approach to public digital infrastructure adopted by policymakers, leveraging digital commons and public ownership to maximize societal benefits and ensure inclusive, open, and interoperable ecosystems.

This Q&A panel will allow attendees the chance to engage in conversation with the paper presenters and to dive into some of the key questions behind the research they have presented.

Attendees will have time to transition into our breakout rooms.

We will hold breakout rooms to discuss the future of open source research.

• Breakout 1: Funding for research and the research agenda for funders
• Breakout 2: Increasing publication opportunities for open source researchers
• Breakout 3: More and better data for open source research

• This session will offer closing remarks for the day from the conference organisers.

Drinks and light snacks will be served at Charlie’s Kitchen, just off Harvard Square.

Speakers and attendees will be welcomed to the event during this time, during which coffee and light refreshments will be provided.

Attendees will be welcomed back to Day 2 of the conference.

Keynote remarks by Katharina Meyer.

In this keynote, Katharina Meyer — Director of the Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund — will reflect on the evolving role of research in supporting and sustaining the open source ecosystem. Drawing on the experience of D//F as field builder and alignment actor, she will explore how insights can support to maintain the functionality, relationships, and dependencies within the network of behavioral regimes, social norms, and technical standards that underpin open technologies, (whether in community-driven projects or enterprise environments). She will also examine the need for distinct, independent research entities that — while unified by scientific principles — serve different purposes and engage with various subfields and communities. Finally, she will highlight how the Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund’s portfolio reflects these dynamics and discuss where the broader open source research ecosystem may be headed in the future.

This lightning talk will present the outcomes of the paper produced as an outcome of the OSPOs for Good 2024 Symposium, which took place July 9 & 10 in New York City. It will provide new insights from the conference, as well as provide a call-to-action for global cooperation around open source and identify tangible next steps to be taken by both the UN and the global open source community.

Thematic Block 5:
Open Source and AI

Using the setting of open source software (OSS), this paper assesses the individual level effects that AI has on task allocation. It exploits a natural experiment arising from the deployment of GitHub Copilot, a generative AI code completion tool geared towards software developers. Leveraging millions of work activities over a two year period, the paper uses a program eligibility threshold to investigate the impact of AI technology on maintainer (OSS linchpin contributors) task allocation within a quasi-experimental regression discontinuity design. The research estimates point towards a large potential for AI to transform work processes and to ameliorate the linchpin problem in the digital economy.

This paper uses speculative design to envision and debate potential futures, considering both the positive and negative impacts of AI on society and role for (ir)responsible AI and data commons licenses in ensuring ethical and equitable use of open AI models. The paper aims to share out findings and methods to help improve the discourse with deeper understanding and more diverse inclusive perspectives about what AI-enabled futures we should want.

Coffee break with drinks and light refreshments served to attendees.

The world’s first most comprehensive law regulating artificial intelligence, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, has been enacted on 13 June 2024 and entered into force on 1 August 2024. The AI Act aims to provide transparency and ensure safe use of AI systems by introducing obligations and requirements for developers and deployers based on the risk posed by AI systems. Despite the long legislation process that launched in 2020 and multiple negotiations, the final version of the Act includes a number of controversial and arguable provisions that undermine both the concept of open source and the future of open-source AI systems. This paper, mainly focusing on the EU AI Act, further examines the legislative approaches to open-source AI systems in other jurisdictions and analyzes the problem of disclosing information on AI systems from both transparency- and safety-related perspectives.

This study provides an extensive analysis of artificial intelligence (AI) integration within academic sciences, specifically examining the adoption, use, and customization of open-source AI foundation models. By manually collecting and analyzing data from over a 1,000 AI foundation models—documenting characteristics such as model size, institution of origin, levels of openness (ranging from fully open-source to restricted access), training data, and software availability—the paper establishes a dataset that reflects the landscape of AI resources available to researchers. Complemented by a dataset of almost 100,000 open-access academic papers retrieved from Semantic Scholar that cite these models, the analysis investigates the scholarly engagement with AI in research publications. Using large language models, namely Llama 3.1 and GPT-4o, we categorize the use of foundation models in academia into three main applications: the development of novel AI technologies, the customization of existing models, and the employment of AI as a routine tool in scientific methodology.

This Q&A panel will allow attendees the chance to engage in conversation with the paper presenters and to dive into some of the key questions behind the research they have presented.

Lunch will be provided onsite to the attendees.

Keynote remarks by Dr. Frank Nagle, as part of a fireside chat.

Dr. Nagle is a leading researcher working on the economics of (open) digtal transformation and the economic value/impact of open source technologies. In this fireside chat, he will reflect on open source economics research and his work to evaluate the value and contribution of open source technology to society.

The myth that individuals with specialised technical expertise ‘coding’ contribute to open source projects hinders inclusivity and diversity, which could affect broader engagement and recognition of other skill sets. This study investigates the percentage of non-code contributions in the top 10 trending GitHub repositories compared to technical contributions on September 18-24, 2024. The data reveals that non-code contributions accounted for a significantly lower percentage than technical contributions, with non-code representing only 9.5% in Fellow and 4.9% in Firecrawl, compared to 90.5% and 95.1% technical issues in those projects. The study also draws insights into strategies for improving inclusivity in open source software from the 2021 Linux Foundation DEI in Open Source Survey and the 2017 GitHub Open Source Survey. Conclusively, this study aims to contribute to a more inclusive open-source ecosystem, fostering greater participation from diverse contributors.

This special panel will explore the practical applications of open source research, focusing on knowledge transfer and the collaborative dynamics between academics and practitioners. It will address how open source research can be conducted sustainably to deliver tangible value, how practitioners can actively contribute to shaping the research agenda, and how all stakeholders can learn from one another.

Extended networking break with drinks and light refreshments served to attendees.

This special panel will explore the future of open source research, examining current challenges and emerging opportunities within the open source community. Featuring speakers from each of the key thematic areas discussed over the two days, it will provide a multi-faceted perspective on the evolving open source research landscape.

In 2023, OpenForum Europe and the OpenForum Academy instituted the Basil Cousins’ Award, in memory of its co-founder, Basil Cousins. Basil was a pioneer in understanding the role of open technologies and open source in society. Dedicated to Cousins’ legacy, the award is meant to encourage future generations committed to rigorous thought and research in the field of open innovation and open technology. With the Basil Cousins’ Award, which will be handed out during this session, OFE continues to build upon Cousins’ legacy by bringing people together and showcasing the work of promising academics.

This session will offer closing remarks for the day from the conference organisers and selected speakers.

Speakers and attendees will be welcomed to the event during this time, during which coffee and light refreshments will be provided.

Attendees will be welcomed back to Day 2 of the conference.

Keynote remarks by Katharina Meyer.

In this keynote, Katharina Meyer — Director of the Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund — will reflect on the evolving role of research in supporting and sustaining the open source ecosystem. Drawing on the experience of D//F as field builder and alignment actor, she will explore how insights can support to maintain the functionality, relationships, and dependencies within the network of behavioral regimes, social norms, and technical standards that underpin open technologies, (whether in community-driven projects or enterprise environments). She will also examine the need for distinct, independent research entities that — while unified by scientific principles — serve different purposes and engage with various subfields and communities. Finally, she will highlight how the Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund’s portfolio reflects these dynamics and discuss where the broader open source research ecosystem may be headed in the future.

This lightning talk will present the outcomes of the paper produced as an outcome of the OSPOs for Good 2024 Symposium, which took place July 9 & 10 in New York City. It will provide new insights from the conference, as well as provide a call-to-action for global cooperation around open source and identify tangible next steps to be taken by both the UN and the global open source community.

Thematic Block 6:
Open Source Ecosystems

This research addresses the pivotal question: How does the integration of generative AI tools in OSS development impact contributors’ motivation, particularly concerning the evolution of interpersonal communications? Employing a rigorous qualitative methodology, the research conducted in-depth interviews with a diverse sample of OSS contributors. This approach captured rich insights into their experiences, perceptions, and motivational shifts in AI-augmented OSS development environments. The findings will inform strategies to maintain and enhance developer engagement in an AI-enhanced ecosystem, ensuring that technological advancement aligns with the core values and motivational needs of OSS communities.

Many popular open source projects are owned and driven by corporations, and in today’s difficult economic climate, those companies are under increasing pressure from VCs, shareholders, and other investors to deliver a strong return on their investments. One response to this pressure has been the relicensing of popular open source projects to more restrictive licenses in the hopes of generating more revenue, disrupting the idea of open source as digital commons. In some cases, this relicensing has resulted in a hostile fork of the original project. Both the relicensing and the resulting fork create turmoil for the users of that project and the community of contributors, and this impact can have a ripple effect throughout the ecosystem. This research will compare and contrast data from three case studies based on license changes that resulted in forks: Elasticsearch / OpenSearch, Redis / Valkey, and Terraform / OpenTofu.

Coffee break with drinks and light refreshments served to attendees.

This study explores the complex power structures and hegemony within the Free/Lib & Open Source Software (FLOSS) ecosystem. Despite the spirit of open collaboration, the FLOSS community is not immune to the formation of hegemony and control. This study aims to provide a coherent analysis of how hegemony is formed in FLOSS projects, on what grounds and how power is exercised, and how such dynamics affect the development process and community governance The project aims to provide a coherent analysis of how these dynamics influence development processes and community governance.

This paper considers the utility of one such proposed strategy: the integration of bug bounty programs with open source projects. Stakeholders have proposed the expanded use of bounty programs—vulnerability reward programs that compensate participants that identify and disclose qualifying bugs—as one possible way to enhance OSS. This paper examines the risks and opportunities associated with integrating bounty programs with open source projects. It argues that while bounties can enhance mature projects by reducing the costs associated with searching for and fixing previously unreported flaws, significant potential adverse impacts are possible. As such, open source projects should exhibit care when adopting bug bounty programs. The paper also identifies the benefits and harms associated with integrating bounty programs with OSS; and it uncovers the key prerequisites for successful integration.

This Q&A panel will allow attendees the chance to engage in conversation with the paper presenters and to dive into some of the key questions behind the research they have presented.

Lunch will be provided onsite to the attendees.

Keynote remarks by Dr. Frank Nagle, as part of a fireside chat.

Dr. Nagle is a leading researcher working on the economics of (open) digtal transformation and the economic value/impact of open source technologies. In this fireside chat, he will reflect on open source economics research and his work to evaluate the value and contribution of open source technology to society.

This special panel will explore the practical applications of open source research, focusing on knowledge transfer and the collaborative dynamics between academics and practitioners. It will address how open source research can be conducted sustainably to deliver tangible value, how practitioners can actively contribute to shaping the research agenda, and how all stakeholders can learn from one another.

Extended networking break with drinks and light refreshments served to attendees.

This special panel will explore the future of open source research, examining current challenges and emerging opportunities within the open source community. Featuring speakers from each of the key thematic areas discussed over the two days, it will provide a multi-faceted perspective on the evolving open source research landscape.

In 2023, OpenForum Europe and the OpenForum Academy instituted the Basil Cousins’ Award, in memory of its co-founder, Basil Cousins. Basil was a pioneer in understanding the role of open technologies and open source in society. Dedicated to Cousins’ legacy, the award is meant to encourage future generations committed to rigorous thought and research in the field of open innovation and open technology. With the Basil Cousins’ Award, which will be handed out during this session, OFE continues to build upon Cousins’ legacy by bringing people together and showcasing the work of promising academics.

This session will offer closing remarks for the day from selected speakers.