Over the past several months during my NGI Evangelism work, I have been travelling a lot around Europe and meeting people both in person and virtually, talking about the extent to which Europe is a great place for Open Source Software. I had a lot of stickers and gave away a message with each one: "Europe cares about Open Source."
A couple of students literally went through my bag of stickers and took one of each, and told me that it would be enough to cover their entire door of the dormitory. After a talk in Berlin, I was swarmed by people wanting to know more about how to effectively design resilient open source communities.
As an NGI Evangelist, I felt like I was on the right side of history. Europe was not suffering under "Broken Windows Theory" because Open Source was a safe place, a viable institution BECAUSE Europe stood behind it. People resonated with the message that Europe believed deeply in open source, enough to actually provide funding for not only the maintenance of this amazing community, but also to those of us on the front lines building our vision of the internet, a Next Generation Internet.
Boy was I wrong. NGI doesn't seem to have been considered worthy of funding next year, and it looks suspiciously like the Open Source Community is being gutted and retrofitted, the latest victim of the technocratic gentrification policy known as Artificial Intelligence:
So, this is why it is important for you, whoever you, to go read the statement from the OSS community. And then take action and sign the letter. Please, we need to band together and make our voices heard, because otherwise we are going to be drowned out in the echo-chamber of LLM Hallucinations.
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Update!
A few days ago, I participated in an exciting NGI Talk:
✨Software as a Product: Risks and Opportunities✨
In this NGI Talk, I discussed the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), the Product Liability Directive (PLD) and the updating of the Blue Book. This new paradigm will require software makers to add a CE mark to their products and follow new requirements.
✅ Are you a software maker wondering how these changes affect your business?
✅ Do you want to know what you need to do and when you need to comply?
This is a unique opportunity to learn what steps you need to take, what you must prepare for, and when you must comply.
👉 Learn EVERYTHING now by clicking here.
Stay safe, be healthy, and see you soon!
denjell