WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:10.760 So, we have another talk coming up, and this one is about funding free software. 00:10.760 --> 00:17.000 Nobody likes to have software that they cannot investigate or cloud software that they cannot 00:17.000 --> 00:18.000 influence. 00:18.000 --> 00:23.480 So, we want to fund open source software, and that's what Nicholas Gates, general and 00:24.000 --> 00:25.160 I'm going to talk about. 00:32.360 --> 00:36.920 Hi, thank you all for coming, and before we introduce ourselves, we want to get to know 00:36.920 --> 00:39.320 the audience really a little bit. 00:39.320 --> 00:44.040 So, first of all, please, who of you is familiar with the great work of the 00:44.040 --> 00:46.160 sovereign tech agency? 00:46.160 --> 00:50.960 That's almost everybody excellence, and are there any of you who went to Nick and 00:50.960 --> 00:55.800 my talk on this subject last year, or watched it, very few, okay, great. 00:55.800 --> 00:59.240 That gives us a good idea of what we should cover. 00:59.240 --> 01:07.360 So, first of all, last year, Nick, who works at OpenForum Europe, and I work at GitHub, 01:07.360 --> 01:13.240 we did a talk about the great work of the sovereign tech fund and our ambition to scale 01:13.240 --> 01:17.480 it to the European level, because we think there should be more of this kind of work, 01:17.480 --> 01:21.800 and at the moment, it's only the German government that is funding it, no funding from 01:21.800 --> 01:27.720 other countries in the EU, no funding from industry, and we really want to scale this up. 01:27.720 --> 01:35.120 And we have been joined today by Jennifer Trigel from University of Cambridge, who has helped 01:35.120 --> 01:40.840 us by doing an excellent study on how this could be done in practice. 01:40.840 --> 01:45.880 So, today we want to talk a little bit about that study, Jen is going to present our 01:45.920 --> 01:50.600 findings, Nick is going to talk about the campaign that we have launched over the course 01:50.600 --> 01:56.400 of the last year, and then finally, I'm going to talk to what you can do to help us make 01:56.400 --> 02:03.560 this a reality, because we're at a really critical point in the European Union's policy 02:03.560 --> 02:10.520 agenda where we have a real chance of actually making the Europeans our tech fund happen. 02:10.560 --> 02:16.880 This is the link where you can download this study, but we'll also put it back up at a later 02:16.880 --> 02:17.880 point. 02:17.880 --> 02:25.200 So, if you did watch last year that at the time this idea of a feasibility study for 02:25.200 --> 02:29.360 a European sovereign tech fund was just that, it was an idea. 02:29.360 --> 02:35.440 And since then we have brought together a team of researchers, including Jen, to actually 02:35.440 --> 02:39.320 lay out in detail what a European sovereign tech fund could look like. 02:39.320 --> 02:42.560 This published study was published in July. 02:42.560 --> 02:47.520 We have presented it to different European institutions starting with the Council in September 02:47.520 --> 02:51.600 that's the representation of the EU member states. 02:51.600 --> 02:57.200 And we got a big coalition together of NGOs, open source foundations, small companies, 02:57.200 --> 03:02.640 big companies, who all together and a letter to the European Commission that was actually 03:02.640 --> 03:09.160 answered in December and quite soon after that, and that's very important for our topic 03:09.160 --> 03:10.160 today. 03:10.160 --> 03:15.360 The European Commission actually started a public consultation saying, we want to give ourselves 03:15.360 --> 03:21.000 an open source strategy and not just an open source strategy for the European Commission's 03:21.000 --> 03:26.640 own administration, but an open source industrial strategy talking about what can the 03:26.640 --> 03:31.840 EU do to actually promote the entire open source ecosystem in the EU. 03:31.840 --> 03:34.360 And we think that's a great opportunity. 03:34.360 --> 03:39.760 Just this week in the EU open source week leading up to fast them, we have presented the study 03:39.760 --> 03:43.640 in the European Parliament and now we're back at fast them. 03:43.640 --> 03:47.800 And with that, I'm going to hand over to Jen to run you through what we have found 03:47.800 --> 03:49.800 in what we propose. 03:49.800 --> 03:53.920 Thank you so much, Felix, for that excellent introduction. 03:53.920 --> 04:00.600 The upshot of the report is that we're asking for $350 million over investment over the 04:00.600 --> 04:06.880 next seven years from the European Union, and that is a minimum, and hopefully would 04:06.880 --> 04:13.040 be joined with co-investment from member states and industry amongst other stakeholders. 04:13.040 --> 04:21.400 The EU STF is a pan-European mission-driven evolution of the self-protect fund, as Felix mentioned. 04:21.400 --> 04:25.240 Essentially, it's a scaled-up version of what Germany is doing. 04:25.240 --> 04:30.200 And the aim is to invest in the maintenance, security, and improvement of strategically 04:30.240 --> 04:33.600 important open source software globally. 04:33.600 --> 04:40.720 And the key criteria that we consider which implementation mechanisms and vehicles would 04:40.720 --> 04:45.600 be most appropriate were designed around these several criteria. 04:45.600 --> 04:51.080 So we looked at financing and coordination, transparency, developer friendly, as we will 04:51.080 --> 04:58.720 be happy to hear, and also having a strong community focus amongst others. 04:58.760 --> 05:02.720 How I contributed to the report, my background is as an international lawyer, is looking 05:02.720 --> 05:08.800 at what are the different legal mechanisms that we can use to actually put this into place. 05:08.800 --> 05:14.520 There are two options, both have their pros and cons, and if you want to have more details 05:14.520 --> 05:18.400 about them, then please do go back and read the report in full. 05:18.400 --> 05:24.720 Option number one is having a standalone and centralized fund over which the EU would have 05:24.720 --> 05:30.760 more direct governance oversight, but that would be very much a moonshot. 05:30.760 --> 05:35.760 That would take far more political will, and also it would need to be enacted via legislation. 05:35.760 --> 05:40.160 So that could really slow down matters and make it a bit more complex. 05:40.160 --> 05:46.040 And then the second option is a hybrid shared management structure, which we thought was 05:46.040 --> 05:53.960 a more politically viable, but also expedient option that can incorporate any gauge 05:53.960 --> 05:57.800 those corporate design principles that I mentioned on the previous slide. 05:57.800 --> 06:00.920 And within this, there were three options that we looked at. 06:00.920 --> 06:06.280 We looked at joint undertakings, important projects of common European interest, and European 06:06.280 --> 06:09.240 digital infrastructure consortia. 06:09.240 --> 06:15.480 And it's the last option that we recommended as the most flexible and politically feasible 06:15.480 --> 06:18.320 mechanism. 06:18.320 --> 06:20.720 It is a relatively novel mechanism as well. 06:20.800 --> 06:26.640 They've only been created in the last few years, and essentially they operate as an implementation 06:26.640 --> 06:28.280 between member states. 06:28.280 --> 06:32.960 It leads three member states need to come together and say, we're committed to doing 06:32.960 --> 06:38.560 this project that one of us can't individually achieve, but together we can really work 06:38.560 --> 06:41.400 productively and have a positive impact. 06:41.400 --> 06:45.720 And there is a lot of flexibility in how an edict operates. 06:45.720 --> 06:50.160 How it operates is set out in the statutes, the member states, the founding member states agree 06:50.160 --> 06:57.320 on that, but having membership and observe status for entities that aren't states is possible 06:57.320 --> 06:58.480 under this model. 06:58.480 --> 07:04.120 And there are a number of different mechanisms within existing edicts of how to engage experts 07:04.120 --> 07:14.880 and other relevant members of the community to make this as impactful as possible. 07:14.880 --> 07:19.960 And finally, in moving towards implementation, we need to take action as soon as possible 07:19.960 --> 07:22.400 to adopt an EU STF. 07:22.400 --> 07:26.760 Felix gave a fantastic overview of the events that we've been speaking at, and we're really 07:26.760 --> 07:32.440 getting this sense that momentum is building towards it, but there is a key opening at the 07:32.440 --> 07:37.760 moment as negotiations are ongoing that we can really get this on their agenda. 07:37.760 --> 07:42.740 So we call on the EU and member states to decide which governance models to adopt, to 07:42.740 --> 07:47.180 be a mock, the funding that I mentioned, and to operate, visualize it as soon as possible, 07:47.180 --> 07:50.100 using one of the models that we recommend. 07:50.100 --> 07:52.380 Great. 07:52.380 --> 07:53.380 Thank you, Jen. 07:53.380 --> 07:58.740 So one of the reasons we did this report is, you know, because it's good to have a report 07:58.740 --> 08:02.660 like this, it's good to spell out the case, it's good to have all the details, but ultimately 08:02.660 --> 08:06.340 the devil is going to be in the details in terms of the implementation. 08:06.340 --> 08:10.780 So really what we've tried to do is to say this report is the first step towards actually 08:10.780 --> 08:15.780 trying to get this interreality and the how of what that fund looks like and how it gets 08:15.780 --> 08:21.580 done is not so important now as making the case for getting it actually funded or kind 08:21.580 --> 08:22.580 of the case made. 08:22.580 --> 08:27.540 So what we've tried to do is use the report as the very first step in a series of actions 08:27.540 --> 08:32.740 to kind of increase attention from EU policy makers on this issue and to really get them 08:32.740 --> 08:38.580 to, you know, care about this topic and to think that this is something we're engaging with, 08:38.580 --> 08:40.860 even if it's in a more indirect way. 08:40.860 --> 08:44.900 So really what we've been doing is going all across Europe, even the world, I even presented 08:44.900 --> 08:46.940 the study in Rio de Janeiro. 08:46.940 --> 08:50.660 We've been talking all about what the value of this study is. 08:50.660 --> 08:55.420 The reason we launched in July is that we really wanted to get attention on the launch of the 08:55.420 --> 08:57.300 MFF budget negotiations. 08:57.300 --> 09:03.220 So the MFF, something Felix explained more in detail last year, represents nearly two trillion 09:03.220 --> 09:08.820 budget for the European Union and a very small percentage of that goes to digital infrastructure 09:08.820 --> 09:12.260 and even smaller would probably go to something like in the USTF. 09:12.260 --> 09:16.340 So what we've been trying to do is communicate the relative scope, comparative to the need 09:16.340 --> 09:20.020 and the potential for leverage from an EU sovereign tech fund and to time it with those 09:20.020 --> 09:24.460 budget negotiations so that hopefully there's potential for the EU to fund either a more 09:24.460 --> 09:28.820 centralized model or our kind of preferred model of a shared hybrid management structure. 09:28.820 --> 09:31.220 So we got some really good coverage of this early in July. 09:31.540 --> 09:35.380 Folks like you're active in the European Open Source Academy, we're writing this up. 09:35.380 --> 09:39.460 We put out several editorials of people expressing support for initiatives and that was a very 09:39.460 --> 09:42.260 important part of launching the effort. 09:42.260 --> 09:46.660 Here's a quote from a big name in the open source community, Daniel Stenberg, Daniel Rotten 09:46.660 --> 09:51.300 editorial in the next web and supported this via the European Open Source Academy, which is the president 09:51.300 --> 09:57.700 of and we feature him on the website Daniel. 09:57.700 --> 10:02.020 So yeah, we went all over the world, here's Jen and I on the right in Rio de Janeiro, 10:02.020 --> 10:05.780 there's me on the left at the open SSL conference, we really tried showing up in different 10:05.780 --> 10:10.740 fora, not just policy events but also developer conferences and everything in between. 10:12.020 --> 10:17.460 We put out a public letter in October, we got nearly 40 actually, yeah, I think it was exactly 10:17.460 --> 10:22.420 40 organizations to sign a public letter calling for the EU sovereign tech fund and we wrote 10:22.420 --> 10:27.780 that letter to the executive vice president and head of your coonin for digital and democracy, 10:27.780 --> 10:32.020 but it was also addressed to Ursula von der Leyen and executive vice presidents to function 10:32.020 --> 10:37.780 as a digital one. We did get a response for that letter and that was a very exciting moment for 10:37.780 --> 10:42.100 us because even if it doesn't commit the commission to much it shows that they are conscious 10:42.100 --> 10:46.900 of our proposal, they're very much engaged with it and we do know for a fact that some of the 10:46.900 --> 10:50.500 key staffers and head of your coonin's cabinet are our folks that have showed up your 10:50.500 --> 10:54.900 close to them in previous years and are very engaged with this topic and we see some of the 10:54.900 --> 10:58.660 spirit of what we've been talking about showing up in some of the ongoing conversations happening 10:58.660 --> 11:03.620 around the cloud and AI development act, we truly can get to maybe in the Q&A as well as this 11:03.620 --> 11:07.620 call for evidence for this open digital ecosystem strategy which has been getting a lot of 11:07.620 --> 11:13.620 attention here at the EU open source week. So this was a very key kind of crucial part of what 11:13.620 --> 11:19.300 we were trying to do and I think it's created some of the kind of foundations for what we're seeing 11:19.300 --> 11:23.220 with the EU open source week in terms of the part of the main practice that we had that field 11:23.220 --> 11:29.220 preference. So here's a sample of all of the organizations that have endorsed this effort to date. 11:29.780 --> 11:35.860 This is just a small subset. We actually didn't intend to do another round of endorsements but 11:35.860 --> 11:40.260 there's a lot of great institutions represented here. If you guys want to come out and express 11:40.260 --> 11:45.140 support for any use of red tech fund, come find me at the end. I'll give you my business card. 11:45.780 --> 11:50.660 We can talk and you can get in touch and we can add your kind of name to the course. 11:53.700 --> 11:57.140 This isn't just smaller organizations. There are a few big players that have really expressed 11:57.140 --> 12:00.740 support for our initiative. A few more that we're unable to make public endorsement in time. 12:00.740 --> 12:06.500 But a really big one just for example is next cloud. So next cloud is something that we awarded 12:06.500 --> 12:10.980 by the European open source awards on Thursday. Frank's part of the check-out, a special recognition 12:10.980 --> 12:16.420 for business and impact for building a business. And I think what next slide is doing really shows 12:16.420 --> 12:19.540 what you can do through open source in the fact that they're coming out in support of an initiative 12:19.540 --> 12:24.660 like this. I think really demonstrates that this is something that is gaining traction and attention. 12:26.660 --> 12:31.940 Here's some of the response that we got to open for our mirror from the executive vice president. 12:33.700 --> 12:39.700 And we also have been trying to go to all the EU institutions. So what we did in September was 12:39.700 --> 12:48.180 we gathered several permanent representations, including the Cyprus representatives. 12:48.180 --> 12:54.180 Cyprus has the presidency of the EU Council this term. And we engage with them trying to talk 12:54.180 --> 12:58.260 about the issues hoping that they'll take it up and make it part of their agenda. That's still 12:58.260 --> 13:02.900 kind of remains to be seen. But open for a mirror, we'll be working with the CPL presidency and some 13:02.900 --> 13:08.420 of the other delegations around some of these topics in the months ahead. We also presented again 13:08.420 --> 13:13.300 to the European Commission by a kind of closed-door meetings. And again, we presented at the European 13:13.300 --> 13:18.740 Parliament, where we are hosted by Polish MEP, Mikhail Kabosko, and that event was also intended 13:18.740 --> 13:23.140 by a senior policymaker from DC Connect Responsible for Future Networks. 13:23.140 --> 13:27.380 People, Cliner, who's been showing up all across the open for a week, which we take is a very 13:27.380 --> 13:34.980 positive sign for what they might do with a version of our proposal. Here's some photos from that event 13:35.140 --> 13:41.620 where we spoke earlier this week. And I think the timing here is increasingly favorable. 13:41.620 --> 13:48.020 So we'll give you guys time to ask questions. But I think the key takeaway for me is that this campaign 13:48.020 --> 13:52.260 is part of a moment, and that moment has resulted in this call for evidence for an open 13:52.260 --> 13:56.260 source software strategy with their calling, open digital ecosystems, including other forms of open 13:56.260 --> 14:01.860 technology. We've been hearing rumors about public funding for open source maintenance coming 14:01.860 --> 14:07.380 via the cloud and AI development act, coming via the MFF negotiations. Maybe something is mentioned 14:07.380 --> 14:13.940 in the open digital ecosystems strategy. Whatever it is, we know that there is a consciousness 14:13.940 --> 14:18.340 and an awareness of our proposal, and that that has increased over the last seven months as 14:18.340 --> 14:22.660 a result of this campaign, and that now we're better positioned than ever to figure out the details 14:22.660 --> 14:26.260 and figure out how we're actually going to get there. So I'll turn back to Felix, and he can talk 14:26.260 --> 14:30.740 a little bit more around that kind of political moment. But yeah, I think that's kind of the message is 14:30.820 --> 14:36.660 this kind of campaign has been really a foundational part of getting where we need to go after the 14:36.660 --> 14:46.420 report was published. Yeah, thank you, Nick, and I want to talk a little bit about why this is 14:46.420 --> 14:52.500 the moment that we can actually make European sovereign tech fund a reality. And a lot has obviously 14:52.500 --> 15:00.100 changed since last year, and probably one of the biggest impacts on how open source software is perceived 15:00.100 --> 15:07.860 by European politicians has probably been a consequence of the election of Donald Trump. Since then, 15:07.860 --> 15:15.300 European policy makers are thinking of open source software much more as a building lock to achieve 15:15.300 --> 15:21.460 digital sovereignty, and I think this has really contributed to the fact that the European Union now 15:21.460 --> 15:26.500 doesn't just want to think about open source software as something that they use internally, 15:26.580 --> 15:32.260 but something that they want to actively promote in the economy and that they hopefully also want 15:32.260 --> 15:38.580 to put some money into. There's also another important development that has happened in the last 15:38.580 --> 15:45.380 year, which is that there is a coalition of the willing of several member states that are 15:45.380 --> 15:51.380 that have formed an edict. So you might remember Jennifer mentioned it earlier, the edict, 15:51.380 --> 15:57.780 European Digital Infrastructure Consortium, is the vehicle that we propose how a European 15:57.780 --> 16:03.620 sovereign tech fund could actually become reality. And such an edict has formed around the topic 16:03.620 --> 16:10.180 of open source software called the Digital Commons Edict. It's a coalition of Germany, the Netherlands, 16:10.180 --> 16:16.420 France, and Italy, and several other member states that are candidates or observers so kind of 16:16.420 --> 16:22.340 interested in joining the effort. So we think this is a really good opportunity to actually work with 16:22.340 --> 16:29.380 this digital Commons Edict that the sovereign tech agency has already involved in to become a way 16:29.380 --> 16:35.380 that industry can pay into the parts the European Union can pay into the parts and several member 16:35.380 --> 16:41.860 states can pay into the parts so that we can all funds and invest in open source maintenance together. 16:42.020 --> 16:49.540 Now I want to come to what you actually can do and I would all really like to invite you to 16:49.540 --> 16:55.460 scan this QR code. It brings you to a website by the European Commission where you can submit 16:56.420 --> 17:02.740 your evidence to the question, what should the EU do to promote open source? The deadline to reply 17:02.820 --> 17:10.260 to this is Tuesday, this week, so around 2000 organizations have already won. 17:10.260 --> 17:16.180 Yeah, so if you have just a few minutes or in the course of this week or half an hour where you 17:16.180 --> 17:22.020 don't want to talk to people anymore, this is a great time to fill this in. It's free form, 17:22.020 --> 17:27.060 so you don't have to go through a big survey or anything you can write. One sentence, you can write. 17:27.620 --> 17:33.380 100 sentences that's entirely up to you. We want to make this as easy as possible for you, 17:33.380 --> 17:38.020 though, so here are a few suggestions of what you might want to say. Of course, 17:38.020 --> 17:43.540 support the idea of a European sovereign tech fund, but another thing that I think is also 17:43.540 --> 17:49.460 really useful is if you know of anything that the European Union has done for open source in the past 17:49.460 --> 17:56.900 that you liked, praise them for it. So for example, next generation internet has funded a lot of 17:56.900 --> 18:03.060 important open source projects over the course of the last few years. If you are affiliated with 18:03.060 --> 18:07.620 any of those projects or are using them, that's a great thing to point out to say you've done 18:07.620 --> 18:14.660 something really important here, please do more of it. Third, I think it's important to stress 18:14.660 --> 18:20.260 that open source development is global. It's often lots about EU open source and sometimes 18:20.260 --> 18:26.580 it's not entirely clear who would be able to benefit from such funding. So if you are 18:26.580 --> 18:30.660 engaged in a project where you have developers from different parts of the world, 18:30.660 --> 18:35.780 it's a great idea to point this out so that, for example, in the case of the German 18:35.780 --> 18:41.380 sovereign tech agency, you don't have to be German to participate in any of their investments 18:41.380 --> 18:46.660 or programs and we think the same should be true for European sovereign tech fund. For us, 18:48.180 --> 18:53.780 I think it's a good idea to stress that any sort of funding or investment mechanism needs to be 18:53.780 --> 18:59.540 unbereocratic to actually help open source projects because unfortunately quite often 18:59.540 --> 19:04.740 funding programs by the European Union can have very difficult, very complex and long 19:04.740 --> 19:10.020 application processes and we are dealing with a demographic that is already underpaid and 19:10.020 --> 19:16.420 overworked so we don't want to raise too high barriers to benefit from these kinds of support systems. 19:17.540 --> 19:22.260 Fifth, it's important and I think that's connected to the last point to ask for open source 19:22.260 --> 19:28.340 community involvement so that the people really know about the open source projects and open source 19:28.340 --> 19:33.860 governance should be involved in designing these instruments and of course, feel free to add 19:33.860 --> 19:40.740 anything else that you think is important. Yeah, like I said, the deadline is on Tuesday, 19:40.740 --> 19:48.420 I think mid-let and I draw some time so don't let this opportunity pass. Here's the QR code again 19:48.500 --> 19:51.700 and we want to leave a little bit of time for Q&A. Thank you. 19:55.300 --> 19:56.340 I think it's not true to one. 19:59.460 --> 20:03.940 I also would just want to say one thing which is that I created draft language that you can copy and paste 20:03.940 --> 20:07.940 in your consultation and act like they do or in the future. So if you're interested in that 20:07.940 --> 20:13.780 company and I'll send that directly to you today. And then yeah, we have about five minutes for 20:13.780 --> 20:18.020 questions. The first question I got just from the Internet via the Matrix channel, how is the 20:18.020 --> 20:20.020 reaction of the member states been? 20:48.020 --> 21:10.020 Yeah, so if we have a presidency was ready to come and get from our concerned topic to do what we have. 21:10.020 --> 21:31.140 There's a real kind of forcing effect or lead time that happens with those 21:31.140 --> 21:35.460 presidencies that can be very impactful. We'll also be engaging with Ireland in the fall. 21:36.740 --> 21:41.780 Speaking of the digital commons edict, I literally had a meeting two days ago and that meeting 21:41.780 --> 21:45.940 made clear that additionally to the states who saw there, I think Denmark and Austria who both 21:45.940 --> 21:50.740 in different ways come out as a support of digital sovereignty are coming on board to that edict as observers. 21:51.460 --> 21:55.860 There are a number of industry players that are reaching out to the digital commons edict. So you 21:55.860 --> 22:01.060 might have mentioned or remembered Jen mentioned the potential for industry code financing. 22:01.060 --> 22:06.580 There does seem to be the possibility at least in the current digital commons edict and there is 22:06.580 --> 22:11.540 some interest of industry there. And additionally, they're having a high-level strategic 22:11.540 --> 22:16.100 objective planning meeting in I think it's March and they asked us to send a version of our 22:16.100 --> 22:21.140 proposal to a number of their different member states into kind of prepares and dossiers for 22:21.140 --> 22:27.060 officials there. So that's a really positive sign. Additionally, I think we're just very 22:27.060 --> 22:32.180 optimistic that given the flexibility of the edict statutes, this potential vehicle could be 22:32.180 --> 22:37.300 adapted over time and we could potentially see some version of our proposal happening through 22:37.300 --> 22:42.340 that digital commons edict. But again, we don't want to put all our eggs in that basket just yet. 22:44.340 --> 22:49.220 Hi, I'm Jan from you, being digital rights. I wanted to ask obviously as professionals, 22:49.540 --> 22:54.100 I'm sure you have, you have thought a lot about the name, sovereign tech fund, 22:54.100 --> 22:57.780 but you certainly know that there's a lot of sovereignty, white washing going on at the moment 22:57.780 --> 23:01.380 in the industry like all the big tech companies including Microsoft who obviously owns GitHub 23:01.380 --> 23:08.100 is doing that as well and Google and Meta, etc. etc. And also just stuffing European doesn't 23:08.100 --> 23:12.180 necessarily make it sovereign and doesn't mean it's open source. So what's wondering, what 23:12.180 --> 23:17.300 are the safeguards that you are planning to build into such a mechanism that makes sure that the 23:17.620 --> 23:22.500 European taxpayer money is going to some kind of proprietary AI factory or to 23:22.500 --> 23:26.660 Palantir, kind of European version of Palantir or European Google or whatever, and it's really 23:26.660 --> 23:29.380 actually benefiting public infrastructure in that world. Thank you. 23:30.980 --> 23:34.340 So the short answer is we can't put in safeguards because the fund hasn't been built yet, 23:34.340 --> 23:38.340 but what we've tried to do with the design criteria is to specify the conditions under which we 23:38.340 --> 23:45.780 should be building that fund so that we can most closely get to a version of the fund that we think 23:45.780 --> 23:49.540 serves, the actual needs of the open-source ecosystem and avoid some of the open-washing 23:49.540 --> 23:53.140 and kind of scope creep issues that you highlight. But I agree it's a real challenge, 23:53.140 --> 23:58.580 what we do put in the report is that we say that open-source technology does enable sovereignty, 23:58.580 --> 24:04.180 not that open-source infrastructure is inherently sovereign, but simply that we believe open-source 24:04.180 --> 24:08.980 technology enables sovereignty by allowing people to have more control and allowing them to 24:08.980 --> 24:14.260 respond more quickly in times of shock or crisis. And so we were really pragmatic here, 24:14.340 --> 24:17.300 we wanted to take what the sovereign tech agency had already done. 24:17.300 --> 24:21.620 I take a very recognizable name and kind of scale that, but we are circumspect about sovereignty 24:21.620 --> 24:27.060 in the actual paper and we try to be clear that we do believe open-source is one of the pre-conditions 24:27.060 --> 24:32.020 for enable-lears of sovereignty, one of the strongest levers that we have, but that it's not an end 24:32.020 --> 24:36.260 in and of itself. You can't be sovereign just because you fund open-source maintenance, for example. 24:39.620 --> 24:42.740 I thought somebody on this side had a question. I came all the way over here. 24:45.220 --> 24:55.300 When you speak with people from Parliament and so on, what angle of arguments works the best? 24:55.300 --> 25:01.300 Is it digital independence, software independence, or is it also an investment in the European 25:01.300 --> 25:11.540 software sector? So one thing that I found is really helpful is having a broad coalition of 25:11.540 --> 25:17.780 different actors who can speak to this from different perspectives depending on what the background 25:17.780 --> 25:25.780 of the politician is. So for example, two supporters of the study, very big names, have been 25:25.780 --> 25:34.260 Mercedes-Benz and SAP. And when they speak to European politicians about how having open-source 25:34.260 --> 25:40.260 basic building blocks as part of their industrial supply chain, how that helps them to compete 25:40.340 --> 25:46.340 economically, that can convince politicians who might not be particularly well connected to the 25:46.340 --> 25:53.620 open-source community, or who might not be as convinced by arguments who are focused on digital 25:53.620 --> 25:59.380 rights or on transparency. So I think the answer is really being able to tackle this issue from 25:59.380 --> 26:06.180 many different perspectives. So in the study, we focused primarily on economic competitiveness, 26:06.180 --> 26:11.940 on cyber security, and on digital sovereignty, and these are kind of three different lenses, 26:11.940 --> 26:17.460 and supporting open-source maintenance, really supports all of them. So you have to adapt 26:17.460 --> 26:22.660 your argument based on who you're speaking to. Yeah, I would just add that I think competitiveness 26:22.660 --> 26:26.980 is very resonant for industry, and industry, as Felix mentioned, is very important for 26:26.980 --> 26:30.580 persuading some of those players. So we just did a panel yesterday at our policy summit, 26:30.580 --> 26:35.300 and it was all about competitiveness in Europe's kind of automotive industry and kind of the role 26:35.380 --> 26:39.540 of open-source software supply chains there. So I think that competitiveness angle is really 26:39.540 --> 26:43.460 important. The last one that we outlined in the paper, in addition to sovereignty and competitiveness 26:43.460 --> 26:48.260 is cyber security. I would say that one has had the least traction so far, but it is still very 26:48.260 --> 26:51.700 valuable and an important part of the conversation that we're having with policy makers. 26:55.540 --> 27:04.980 Hi, very practical question. So I'm part of the Django steering council, and as part of that, 27:04.980 --> 27:12.660 we've been looking to submitting several proposals to the tech fund. What is the overlap 27:12.660 --> 27:18.900 between the German fund and Yedik? Should we submit to the German fund? Should we 27:19.700 --> 27:28.100 look into submitting to Yedik? Can we submit to both? What's the situation? 27:29.220 --> 27:33.860 So the short answer is that the EU sovereign tech fund is not built, and it probably won't be 27:33.860 --> 27:40.260 built for months, if not years. So you should continue applying to the German sovereign tech agency. 27:40.260 --> 27:43.860 And if we do get funding, my hope is that in the short term, a lot of that funding 27:43.860 --> 27:48.260 actually will go to the German sovereign tech agency because they are one of the best places we 27:48.260 --> 27:51.780 have to actually procure open-source maintenance and to get money into the hands of developers. 27:52.580 --> 27:56.740 So I expect a very close role between the German sovereign tech agency and an EU sovereign 27:56.740 --> 28:01.540 tech fund, if and when, and EU sovereign tech fund does emerge. And my hope is that if we engage 28:01.620 --> 28:05.460 through these hybrid shared management structures, we can also encourage other member states to 28:05.460 --> 28:10.820 set up unique novel types of institutions to do this type of work as well. Some of those might 28:10.820 --> 28:15.060 look like the German sovereign tech agency, or they might look different, and we should hopefully 28:15.060 --> 28:17.220 see some experimentation. That would be ideal in my opinion. 28:19.060 --> 28:23.060 We have one more question. This is also coming from the internet. It's a bit long. I'll try to read it. 28:24.900 --> 28:29.700 It seems comfortable for certain organizations, for example, get up if the government maintains 28:29.780 --> 28:34.980 open-source infrastructure with public money. After all, they benefit most from it, building 28:34.980 --> 28:40.340 and selling products around and on top of this ecosystem. It seems a critical question is, 28:40.340 --> 28:43.620 how they want to contribute to such a fund? What are your thoughts? 28:44.340 --> 28:49.700 Yeah, that's actually a great question because one of the reasons why we started this initiative 28:49.700 --> 28:55.460 is because with the current set up of the German sovereign tech agency, we as industry actually 28:55.460 --> 29:01.300 cannot pay into it. That is one thing that we want to fix with the European sovereign tech fund, 29:01.300 --> 29:09.380 that actually the budget of the European Union and of industry can be used to fund open-source 29:09.380 --> 29:15.620 maintenance together. A lot of companies do have bigger or smaller open-source maintenance or open-source 29:15.620 --> 29:22.180 security funds, but for the maintainers, it's not necessarily particularly useful to have to apply 29:22.180 --> 29:29.060 to dozens of different funds individually. So we think there is a lot of benefit of being able 29:29.060 --> 29:36.020 to pool funding from lots of different sources and to be able to build bigger open-source maintenance 29:36.020 --> 29:42.340 infrastructures at the EU level. Okay, thank you very much. One more round of applause for this excellent 29:42.340 --> 29:50.020 talk.