State of Open Con 2023

Proving your worth as an open source program office

• Chris Howard, Program Manager, EPAM Systems
• Bottom line -> translating open source into business and policy language

State of open source Africa

• Samson Goddy
• Split between community and projects (cited also GSoc/other programs)
• https://github.com/oscafrica
• https://oscafrica.org/
• Internet is expensive (connectivity vs computation!)
• Lots of fintech companies -> switching currencies in Africa, speaking with open collective
• Network/sustainability/career
• Huge growth during COVID-19
• Check out Open Source Challenge 2021 (build & customised for context as opposed to Outreachy or GSoC)
• Partners/collabs: She Code Africa: Women of OSCA (wosca) & Facebook Dev Circle
  • Ruth Ikegah
  • https://festival.oscafrica.org/
• Intentionality about mentorship programs -> customised for local context
• info@oscafrica.org
• Connect to
  • GOSH -> Frank Landon Bentum
  • HOTOSM -> Geoffrey

What do we mean by open governance

• Siolna BOnewald, Florent Zara, stephen Walli
• IEEE - Open source good governance handbook
• https://ospo.zone/docs/ggi_handbook_v1.1.pdf
• Standards -> as soon as you step outside the boundaries of the open source community, the definitions are a lot murkier
• Governance is about how a group of people make decisions about their collective state
  • example: Kubernetes etc –> 6 developers at google to 100s of people, intimacy changes…
  • example: Eclipse, Apache
  • example: Open Knowledge Maps (from conversation earlier)
• Key questions: How big are you?
• Transitions in open source, 1.0 dev2dev w/ academic and businesses, 2.0 more companies involved, now 3.0 governments + foundations + companies + … with this comes regulation, if we don't define our own language first, then we won't have control
• Companies wanting "open source off the shelf", and to cherrypick what they are doing
• Creating trust as we step into new spaces. Engineers want to talk about process. Business people won't to understand investment (value), lawyers managing/mitigating risk,
• Apache: maintainers + committers
  • How are we going to handle it when money is involved?
  • How are we going to handle it when government and policy is involved?
  • How can we set the tone more without being dominated
• Q: How do you commercialise your product and have it open source? How do you set a tone for OSS that isn't free labor but also pays for itself?
  • A: A company needs to undersatnd it… RedHat showed product & community separate. Upstream project work in a community (infinite timeline) and downstream product work for a customer (finite). There was a pivot point in 2002-2003 when they said they're an enterprise "cheap unix on intel" and it changed how they . Paul Cormier "enterprise software company vs open source company".
  • A: Strong governance… a lot of the actors work on a common platforms.
  • A: Governance on corporate governance, but make sure you have the consensus building tools to make sure they can work together.
• Q: Ethical use of open source, and how can that be reflected in the governance of a project.
  • Kubernetes -> book?
  • A: "The greater good" is making it open. People ask about implications of
  • A: Ethics question gets very messy very quickly. As new generations change, it's a hard discussion about a way to control it outside of the (ethical) license. Massive companies would love to make license changes too, so if that was revisited, many others will get involved.
  • A: "YOu shall you do" vs "You may do this". Recommended practices sit in the middle. What are the difference between something that is licensed about open source vs something that is vibrant?
• Q: Intergenerational conversations surrounding
  • A: Building that community.
  • A: There are pieces of the Kubernetes that are becoming factioned. She was gen 1. Handed it off to gen 2. Gen 3 is getting factioned. As I talk to younger and younger gerations… don't necessarily have a language for how you have a cooperative discussions.
  • A: I have noticed that it is in tools too… email listervs vs chat platforms
  • MS: Storytelling in open science!!
  • Mike @kubernetes
  • A: Always follow the money. Once you understand how the money flows, you can understand how to make that money flow. That becomes interest in people's issues to enabling them to succeed.
• Q: How do you understand governance at different stages and at different timelines?
  - A: So amny new companies and new players are coming into this open space. Kubernetes governance is alot. People expect that
  - A: Strong governance in Eclipse. Slightly conservative. It was very interesting for people. Job is to guide companies in helping to guide them through the project.
  - A: As I get reaquainted with Eclipse + IEEE and each of them.
  - A: Art of merging different cultures. Open source and open standards are not the samet hings. Overcoming those differences
  • Simon - Web mink
  • Ethics in Design -> Free and open standards, academic focused, cited by European Commission,
  • (He)artificial intelligence
• Any standard/practice/guideline is important to be implementable… Will it be universally implementable?
• Confluence –> translation
• Minimal Viable Govenrance
  • IEEE evolutionat
  • bike pursell
  • Printing industry affecting citations

## Contacts from MS

• Icebreaker one - Gavin Starks, gavin@icebreaker
• Tech for good Alliance - linkedin
• Wikimedia - Georgia / AI-UK
• Kamila Joshi - ODI (impact)
• Malcom Talli -
• Adam Freeman-Pask - Head of Partnerships, Sport Englad, adam.freeman-pask@sportengland.org
• Steven Walli - Microsoft + IEEE
• Richard Leeming - the audience agendcy, richard.leeming@theaudienceagency.org
• Raluca Grosu - menokit (win tech)
• Donaslawa Waytowicz - Bitergia
• Eclipse - sign-ins
• Credit them to their work

Floppy Joes