OW2con'24 Program
Please discover OW2con'24 main program below and view the program of the parallel BREAKOUT SESSIONS
Financing open source and commons
Accessibility
Technologies: OW2 projects and beyond
Community & governance
Open source in education, science & research
Cloud, Edge, IoT, Cyber security, AI, the latest trendy buzz words!
Others
Keynotes
Awards ceremony
Main stage
Tuesday, 11
09:00
☕ Welcome coffee
09:45
Chair: Pierre-Yves Gibello, CEO @OW2
09:45
Event opening
Pierre-Yves Gibello
CEO @ OW2
TBD
10:00
After two years of leading a global, multi-stakeholder conversation to co-design the Open Source AI Definition, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) is getting close to the finish line. Stefano Maffulli, OSI's executive director, will explain how the co-design process works, reveal the content of the latest draft of the Definition and highlight the next steps.
Stefano Maffulli
Executive Director @ OSI
TBD
10:30
This presentation delves into higher education's impact on and benefits for open source software projects and their partner communities. Open source thrives through collaboration, innovation, and knowledge exchange; all core attributes of academic and research institutions. By engaging with universities and colleges, organizations can tap into a pool of aligned initiatives, diverse resources, broad expertise, and cutting-edge research. Likewise, higher education institutions benefit from real-world applications, industry insights, and opportunities for student experiential learning. This session will introduce strategic opportunities and best practices for fostering fruitful partnerships. Participants will gain insights into the immense potential and tangible value of such collaborations and practical guidance for initiating and nurturing effective relationships in the open source ecosystem.
Patrick Masson
Executive Director @ Apereo Foundation
Patrick Masson joined The Apereo Foundation as Executive Director in January 2023. Prior to Apereo, Patrick served as General Manager for the Open Source Initiative after working within higher education IT for over twenty years, including roles as CIO within the State University of New York and CTO at the University of Massachusetts' Office of the President. Prior to these, he served as the Director of Technology at the SUNY Learning Network and Director of the UCLA Media Lab.
Patrick is an adjunct instructor with SUNY Albany's College of Computing and Information and speaks frequently on topics related to open source software, open education, and educational technology. Patrick is the co-founder of EDUCAUSE's "Openness" Constituency Group and served on his local school board from 2014-2018.
11:00
From its historical dedication to education and women's rights, Tunisia has laid the groundwork for a thriving inclusion in various technological fields especially for women. We will showcase key figures and approach to gender inclusivity, our journey and contributions related to technology and specifically the open-source field and discuss the opportunities and challenges, we face in nurturing Tunisia's Open-Source landscape.
Amani Jebali
Manager @ Sofrecom Tunisia
After several years of consulting in Digital Transformation & Innovation for different market segments, I became, in 2022, Manager of Open Source Pole at Sofrecom Tunisia (Part of Orange Group). I am leading projects and studies based on Open Source solutions and collaborating with different entities of Orange Group as well as the French Open Source ecosystem (Users, Makers and Associations (TOSIT & OW2)).
Narjes Mahjoub
Business Analyst @ Sofrecom Tunisia
Passionate about technology and innovation, my journey began as a local scout leader and co-founder of a tech association, leading me to my current role as a business analyst where I have the opportunity to be immersed in the Open Source ecosystem. I'm thrilled to be part of the OW2 community and open source world!
Mariem Saidi
Technical Lead @ Sofrecom Tunisie
Réferent technique et relais Open Source au sein de Sofrecom Tunisie
11:30
Join us in exploring the groundbreaking success story of open-source 5G technologies that has transformed the landscape of telecom technologies. This talk will delve into the wider paradigm shift brought about by open-source initiatives such as Free5GC, OpenAirInterface, Open5GS and PacketRusher, which have shattered the barriers of proprietary systems (or have they?). Discover how open-source is making telecom accessible to a broader audience, breaking down the complexities of traditional telecom, and fostering interoperability in a once-closed ecosystem. Explore the future of telecom, where innovation thrives in the hands of a collaborative, open community.
Valentin D'Emmanuele
5G Core Engineer @ Free Mobile
Valentin, an accomplished 5G Core Engineer, is a driving force in the realm of telecommunications. Currently employed as a 5G Core Engineer at Free Mobile, Valentin has made significant contributions to the industry. As the visionary behind the PacketRusher open-source tool, Valentin has pioneered advancements in open-source performance testing and automatic validation for 5G Core Networks. This tool has set industry standards under Valentin's stewardship. Additionally, Valentin is a valued contributor to various open-source 5G projects,
11:50
The smart device revolution has given rise to amazing products and services. It has birthed unprecedented connectivity, powered the rise of social platforms, generated new industries and empowered people. Looking forward, we see a significant shift towards open web technologies and open mobile technologies. A shift that will liberate developers from siloed models, encourage interoperability and champion fair competition.
Huawei invites you to step outside Droid’s house, go past the walled orchard and discover the free world. Let us show you a new landscape with Oniro and OpenHarmony, a future-proof open source operating system collaboration for a multitude of devices
The Oniro Project is a collaborative effort between the Eclipse Foundation and the OpenAtom Foundation, forging the world's first cross-regional open-source operating system project. Built on the robust foundation of OpenHarmony, Oniro leverages the strengths of both organizations:
- Eclipse Foundation's Open Source Governance: Oniro benefits from the Eclipse Foundation's proven experience in managing open-source projects, ensuring transparency and fostering a thriving developer community.
- OpenAtom's Technical Foundation and Developer Base: Oniro builds upon OpenHarmony's strong technical core and taps into its vast developer ecosystem.
This unique partnership empowers Oniro to create a future-proof operating system with a rich graphical user interface (UI) for mobile and IoT device. In this session, we'll delve into the various components and layers that make up Oniro.
Suhail Khan
Director of Development, Programming & Engineering @ Huawei
TBD
12:10
The goal of the FusionIAM Community is to put together open source software used to build a global IAM (Identity and Access Management) solution.
Most of the time all the softwares present in the FusionIAM community are well know separately but never in the context of a global IAM solution. FusionIAM project will provide an easy way to deploy and configure the whole stack:
- LDAP directory
- Management interface
- White pages
- Web Services
- Authentication portal
- Access control
- Synchronization connectors
FusionIAM provides containers for an smooth deployment, either on a virtual machine or on a kubernetes server.
Clément Oudot
Identity Solutions Manager @ Worteks
Identity Solutions Manager by Worteks
Contribute to LemonLDAP::NG, LDAP Tool Box, LSC, FusionIAM.
12:30
Presentation of the Data Visualization managed service integrated in Orange Cloud systems, based on Apache Superset open source SW. Focused on: the perimeter of use cases / ReX & when to chose the solution (it value added vs other editor BI choices), how we did implement it in Orange in order to better meet business needs, its compliance to the company rules, including security aspects (authentication, vulnerabilities checks, backup & restore)
Anca Dumitru
BI Developer @ Orange Innovation
Member of the BIDM (Business Intelligence and Data Management) for almost 10 years. Have been involved in several Data Visualization projects using tools like QlikView or Superset as a data analyst and BI developer. Currently working on the Data Visualization Service in Orange Group Innovation based on open source Apache Superset.
Anca Bobes
BIDM manager @ Orange
BIDM (Business Intelligence & Data Management) manager, with role of Product Owner on Data Visualization services within Orange Group Innovation (Superset open source & Power BI editor). More than 15 years experience. Grew from data analysis, business analysis to project management & management. Changed and adapted to environments from classic data environments to Big Data & Cloud. Background of projects managed within the team: BI / Marketing / IT , with a team of project leaders, business analysts & BI developers.
12:40
🍽 Lunch break
14:00
Chair: Nicolas Toussaint, Open Source Expert @Orange
14:00
As more and more software companies decide to abandon open source licenses to adopt source-available or non-compete licenses, it is time to take a step back.
In this talk, we will look critically at those recent developments, replace them in historical context, explain the origin and value of the permissionless innovation that we currently all enjoy, and reassert the value of software developed in an open collaboration.
Thierry Carrez
General Manager @ OpenInfra Foundation
TBD
14:30
Forty-four years ago, Richard Stallman gave birth to the Free Software movement. Personal interest, an intellectual view about the pragmatism of software openness, and a deep-set belief about the morality of software as a commons, ran head-first into the growing shift towards closed and protected software. Clever use of copyright law to enshrine software freedoms kick-started a revolution. Yet despite the rise of the more business-friendly Open Source Software movement, many for-profit companies still view liberated software as an anti-capitalist endeavour. It's a common question: "How can something given away for free, even possibly used and exploited by competitors, make any financial sense for a business?" This talk will explore the notion of value and why, when and how freed software makes good business sense.
Christian Paterson
Founder and CEO @ Open Up
Christian is an open source strategy and OSPO expert with many years of experience. He is internationally respected and has peer-reviewed or participated in three books about open source. Christian has served on the OW2 board for many years and, in 2023, became board president. Christian currently coordinates the OW2 MiniApp Initiative, participates in the OW2 Good Governance Initiative (which he spearheaded) and OSPO Alliance, and previously created the OW2 Open Source Accessibility Initiative. In 2020, Christian founded the strategy consultancy "Open Up" (before this, he was head of the Open Source Governance for Orange). Christian holds diplomas in neurobiology and cognitive science. Out of hours, he enjoys walks, gardening, current affairs, and the occasional video game.
14:50
Worldwide, we spend over 1 trillion dollars per year for the loaded cost of software developers.
If every company spent just 0.1% of that amount to fund open source maintainers, we’d unlock a billion dollars per year to fund the maintenance of open source.
That would pay the full time salaries for thousands of maintainers, their managers, security training, etc.
That seems fairly cheap for software that accounts for 70% to 97% of our software stack depending on how you count. And just imagine the positive impact it would have on the security of our software supply chain!
We’re way overdue making a clear distinction between open source developers and open source maintainers and professionalizing the latter.
In this talk, we’ll look at the current solutions to support open source software maintenance and their limits, the negative impact of feature-driven open source sponsoring, successful example of professionalizing maintenance in an adjacent field (Open Web Docs), what this could concretely look like for open source, and the benefits it would have for the community, the contributors, the users, and the end-users.
Tobie Langel
Principal @ UnlockOpen
Tobie Langel is a world-leading expert on open source and standardization. He advises some of the biggest names in tech (Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Intel, Cisco), promising startups (Airtable, Postman, GitLab), industry organizations (OpenJS Foundation, OASIS, W3C) and nonprofits (Organization for Ethical Source, Ushahidi, Omidyar Network), pro bono or through his consultancy, UnlockOpen.
Tobie’s unique mix of deep technical expertise, open source and standardization street creds, thorough understanding of IP concerns, industry-wide network, and broad, business-focused strategic perspective makes him an ideal partner when growing thriving open ecosystems that balance private and public interests in pursuit of the common good.
15:10
This presentation will focused on the return of experience of 3 organizations of TOSIT association :
MAIF : 1. Funding of individual developers and 2. Creation in open rather inner source (mélusine, shapash...)
SNCF : 1. Creation of PostgreSQL.fr interentreprises 2. Major investment in TOSIT 3. Co-creation of open rail Foundation
ORANGE : Establishment of a network of 15 partners based on recurring annual budgets such as maintenance to sustain support for Orange and in turn, for the open source ecosystem.
Frédéric Pied
Head of IT modernization program @ MAIF
Head of IT modernization program & Head of opensource strategy at MAIF.
Founded 85 years ago, MAIF has developed a human-centred mutual insurance model. Each member is both insurer and insured. This singularity has been reflected since our origins in our organization, our missions, our actions. We offer a different, responsible and efficient model, based on trust. Our opensource strategy cover 4 challenges : promotion of opensources solutions instead of private licenced solutions, contribution to opensource project that we use, edition of opensource solutions (https://maif.github.io/) and contribution to opensource usages developpement in French big compagnies.
Gilles Viton
Head of Community Open Source program at Orange France + Vice pdt of TOSIT @ TOSIT
to be completed
Simon Clavier
Open Source Strategist @ SNCF
Simon CLAVIER is a french Engineer whose background is electrical and biomedical engineering before specializing on IT for the last 25 years, through a wide diversity of missions, from development to governance through sysadmin. He is working for SNCF Group since 2007, in 2013 he achieved a MBA focused on Systemic and new kinds of management and organizations and then became « Open Source Strategist ». He is since convinced these two sujects are key factors of a successfull and sustainable digital transformation, as you have to act with people through a «reinvented organization » [1] and chose technologies you are able to control. He is a cross-entreprises cooperation activist on Open Source : President of TOSIT (The Open Source I Trust) [2], Vice-President of the « French-Speaking PostgreSQL Cross-Enterprise Work Group » [3] and active stakeholder in the "OpenRail Association" [4].
15:30
In this debate we will explore the impact of the new forthcoming European regulation and notably the CRA (Cyber Resilience Act) on OW2 projects and open source projects in general. How projects will be able to ensure that their downstream consumers can comply with the CE Mark requirement? We will also address more largely the state of the European standard system.
Stefane Fermigier
Founder and CEO @ Abilian
Stefane Fermigier is a French tech entrepreneur and open source advocate. He is the founder and CEO of Abilian, a company which develops enterprise information management solutions based on open source software. Previously, he founded Nuxeo in 2000, a company which was sold in 2021 for $M150. A graduate of ENS Paris (now called ENS PSL), he holds a PhD in mathematics from Paris 7 University (now called University of Paris).
He has cofounded and led - as president/chairman, co-president/co-chairman or vice-president - several organisations dedicated to developing the open source ecosystem in France and Europe:
- EUCLIDIA (2021)
- APELL (2020)
- The PyData Paris / PyParis conference (2014)
- CNLL (2010), the French National Council of Free / Open Source Companies.
- GTLL (2007), the business and innovation cluster for open source in the Paris Region (part of the Systematic Paris Region cluster).
- The Open World Forum / Paris Open Source Summit (2008), yearly conference dedicated to open source and "open everything" in Paris.
- EuroLinux (2000), a federation of European open source associations, that was formed to fight software patents between 2000 and 2005.
- AFUL (1998), the french-speaking Linux and free software users association.
He's also the founder or a cofounder of several open source projects, including:
- 2024: Hop3 (Python-based self-hosted cloud platform)
- 2021: NUA (Python and Docker based self-hosted cloud platform)
- 2016: Olapy (Python based business analytics)
- 2012: Abilian SBE (Python based social business platform)
- 2009: Apache Stanbol (content analysis)
- 2009: Apache Chemistry (CMIS implementation in several languages)
- 2007: Nuxeo EP (Java based ECM platform)
- 2002: Nuxeo CPS (Python based collaboration suite
)
Simon Phipps
Standards & Policy Director @ OSI
TBD
Camille Moulin
Consultant @ Inno³
Camille has been an Open Source and Open Standards advocate for quite a few years now; he is currently working as a consultant at Inno³, a French niche consultancy specialized in all things Open from an IP & organisational point of view.
16:10
☕ Coffee break
16:40
Chair: Olivier Bouzereau, Community Coordinator @OW2
16:40
A free, trustworthy, inclusive and respectful internet is one of the main visions of the founders of the internet, users and the authorities (e.g. https://www.ngi.eu/about/). Research estimates that approximately 96% of all software nowadays is open source or has open source at its root. Initiated as a response to proprietary code, open source is usually defined as source code made available to the general public for modification and redistribution, where human programmers build upon the work of others, adapting excerpts of the code, often in a collaborative process. As a decentralized software development model, with its main principle peer production, open source grew out of the F(L)OSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) movement, where free refers to ‘freedom’ and not price, with source code openly shared without restrictions. However, there are also those who promote F(L)OSS and state that open source is the resulting business model built upon it. Yet why is it necessary to understand what open source is, its histories and how public funding promotes sustainability?
The evolving genre of FOSS/open source has been offered as a solution to the problems of (corporate) proprietary code; simultaneously it opens the door to software developers worldwide, who build new infrastructures and technical solutions based on shared resources and open code. The EU’s NGI (Next Generation Internet) funds diverse projects from a range of developers: SMEs, entrepreneurs, academics and activists––one of them is NGI Search. The vision of the NGI Search project is to ‘change the way we use and experience search & discover data and resources in general on the internet and on the web’, with the condition that all code from deliverables must be made open source. (https://www.ngisearch.eu/) Ethnographic interviews/surveys will be conducted with some of the developers to comprehend the ethics and values of the forms FOSS is taking within their awarded search projects and the sustainability of open source development through various lenses (financial, ideological, mental health, community, etc). This research delves into the ethics implicit in FOSS and open source business models, thereby contributing a theoretical framework/data visualisation mapping of humanising open source software and sustainability development.
Renée Ridgway
Postdoc @ Aarhus University
Renée Ridgway is a Post-Doc in the SHAPE centre at the department of Digital Design and Information Studies/BTECH, Aarhus University, DK. Presently her interdisciplinary research addresses the problematics and politics of Google search through public workshops and data visualisations, the ethical aspects of its alternatives (a.o. a forthcoming European public index), F(L)OSS sustainability developments and the so-called future of search (chatbots).
17:00
Free software is increasingly financed by large organizations, which tend to steer projects towards their own specific needs. I will explain why this is not desirable for anyone and I will give feedback on the way I try to ensure the projects I participate to continue to remain attractive and useful for everyone.
Maxime Besson
Systems Engineer @ Worteks
Systems Engineer at Worteks
17:20
The virtuous sides of the Open Source model are well known; at the same time, and without necessarily a causal link, many companies are migrating to SaaS-type models.
In this session, we’ll explore both subjects and see that a causal link does exist, but also that this relationship between Open Source and SaaS is actually more complex than at first sight, since it forms a virtuous circle that, in retrospect, looks like a no-brainer! Are Open Source and SaaS, two very strong trends in our industry, the perfect couple?
Vincent Untz
CTO @ Centreon
Vincent bootstrapped his career thanks to his passion for open source more than 20 years ago: heavily involved in all aspects of the GNOME project, he was recruited by SUSE to keep working on what he loved. He later became involved in openSUSE and in OpenStack. His involvement in the community covered all kind of roles in various projects: contributor, reviewer, maintainer, release manager, director of a Foundation, chairman, and more! Today, Vincent is happy to mix his interests in open source, technology, people and strategy on a daily basis thanks to his role of CTO at Centreon.
17:40
The OW2 best project awards recognize and reward "best of breed" projects and successful implementations of OW2 technologies.
18:00
🥳 Free cocktail party
Wednesday, 12
09:30
Chair: Jenn Cummings, Administrator @Apereo
09:30
On February 7th, France and Germany announced that they were collaborating on a sovereign digital suite based on open-source and interoperable solutions, aiming to create a coherent and comprehensive range of digital tools for public agents, including an instant messaging service based on Matrix.
In France, this effort is lead by DINUM. We will present this new approach and how we intend to take part in open source communities to help finance, maintain and support the development of open source solutions used by public agents.
Virgile Deville
Digital Commons Fund Coordinator @ La Suite Numérique | DINUM
Virgile Deville is a civic tech entrepreneur. He co-founded Open Source Politics, the principal integrator of Decidim, a FOSS citizen participation platform. Since 2023, he now advises the French Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs (DINUM) with its programs to foster collaboration with digital commons: the Citizens' Initiative Accelerator (Beta Gouv) and the Digital Commons Fund (La Suite). He teaches “Digital Commons and Public Policy” at Sciences Po Paris.
Tristan Nitot
Associate Director, Digital Commons and Anthropocene @ OCTO Technology
Tristan Nitot is an entrepreneur, book author and hacktivist who has been involved the the Mozilla project (Firefox) since its early days. He has co-founded and was president of Mozilla Europe. He was then in charge of advocacy for the Qwant European search engine before becoming its CEO. After a quick stint as Scaleway's Sustainability Lead, he is now associate director for digital commons and Anthropocene. Tristan is deeply concerned about climate change and as such he is the producer and host of the Octet Vert podcast in French, which aims at exploring the complex relationship between digital and climate change.
09:50
Today, Open Source alternatives are missing when it comes to the search of complete suites integrating the most common use-cases of collaboration: email, chat, document & knowledge management, issue tracking, user management. IT departments looking for such suites are forced to turn towards proprietary solutions such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workplace.
However, alternatives are in the building. Among them, openDesk, an initiative lead by the German Ministry of Interior, stands out.
This project aims at building a complete Open Source alternative to Microsoft 365, where the software, the integrations, and the infrastructure required for project are to be released under Open Source licences. At the core of this project are several European Open Source software vendors, including Univention (user management), Open-Xchange (email), Nextcloud (file management), Nordeck / Jitsi (video conferencing), Element (chat), Collabora (document editing), OpenProject (project management) and XWiki (knowledge management). Operations on the project are also coordinated by Dataport, a service provider for the German administration.
This presentation will focus on describing the project, its governance, and describe how its different actors organize in order to foster integrations within Open Source products, and thus create a usable platform on top of them.
Clément Aubin
Director of sales and professional services @ XWiki
I'm a passionate Open Source contributor. You can find me usually within the XWiki and OpenFoodFacts communities, at OW2 or at FOSDEM, in the Collaboration devroom.
On my day job, I'm working at XWiki SAS as director of sales and professional services, to build FOSS knowledge management solutions XWiki and CryptPad.
10:10
Join us for an exciting update from the world of Collabora Online (COOL). Let us show you how users and integrators benefit from using a security focused, truly open-source, online office suite. In this session we’ll show you why File Sync & Share and LMS provisions are integrating Collabora Online into their products. Hear about the work we’ve done over the past year to improve integration APIs, and make COOL an even better experience for its users. See what makes Collabora Online so feature rich and powerful. For administrators seeking cutting-edge solutions, we have interesting new Kubernetes deployment options that are easy to install and automatically-scale. From seamless deployment and integration of external tools, to easy font management APIs and tooling to enhance compatibility across platforms – COOL makes your job a breeze. But that's not all! We have infused the underlying LibreOffice technology with a host of essential features for users, building on our foundation of strong interoperability and collaborative editing. Hear about the latest features including usability, accessibility and interoperability improvements, as well as how we have improved performance across the board. Learn how Collabora Online brings scalable, secure, on-premise document editing to everyone – allowing integrators to provide extra functionality to their offering, and users to stay in control of their data.
Michael Meeks
CEO @ Collabora Online
Michael runs Collabora's Productivity division making Open Source rock around Office Productivity and documents, particularly Collabora Online and other products based on LibreOffice.
Michael is a Christian and enthusiastic Open Source developer. He runs Collabora's Office division, leading our Collabora Online and Office products, supporting customers and partners alongside our extremely talented team. He has served as a Director of the The Document Foundation and has contributed to both ODF and OOXML standardization. Prior to Collabora he gained a wide experience as a Novell/SUSE Distinguished Engineer working on various pieces of Free Software infrastructure across the Linux stack to from the base-system, boot-time, MeeGo, GNOME, CORBA, Nautilus, Evolution and Open Source accessibility, among others.
10:30
☕ Coffee break
11:00
Chair: Patrick Masson, Executive Director @Apereo Foundation
11:00
In the last year we saw the rise of AI systems like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Dall-E and others. Large Language Models like GPT are enabling a lot of new innovative features and products which will revolutionise the world. But this large autoregressive language models come with a lot of challenges that can have negative effects on the Open Source and Open Tech community. For example it’s unclear if in the future everyone will have access to the same ML models and training data. Can students, startups and open source people build innovative new products using AI in the same way the open source communities build Open Code and Open Tech. How can we make sure that the AI system are not discriminating underrepresented minorities? What is the energy consumption and CO2 emissions of this new big AI systems? This talk will discuss the current challenges around AI. In the second half it covers the new innovative local and open source AI features that the Nextcloud community is building. At the end the talk looks into the new Ethical AI framework and what it means for existing SaaS AI solutions and the open source local alternatives. It also covers the ongoing discussion to define an Open Source AI definition in the OSI community.
Frank Karlitschek - Nextcloud
CEO @ Nextcloud
TBD
11:30
For the past 50 years, the computing industry has been following Moore's law, so we end up sending to trash millions of well-working computers every year. We can do better. In fact, now that climate change and biodiversity collapse are here and getting worse, we urgently need to do better. I have a plan. The good news is that Moore's law is slowing down. If we start optimizing the software stack we have, we'll realize we're sitting on a huge pile of unused ressources. This will enable us to keep innovating without having to build new IT equipment, which is the biggest environmental issue with IT. In short, we'll run tomorrow's services on yesterday's computers? We have to, we can't wait any longer.
Tristan Nitot
Associate Director, Digital Commons and Anthropocene @ OCTO Technology
Tristan Nitot is an entrepreneur, book author and hacktivist who has been involved the the Mozilla project (Firefox) since its early days. He has co-founded and was president of Mozilla Europe. He was then in charge of advocacy for the Qwant European search engine before becoming its CEO. After a quick stint as Scaleway's Sustainability Lead, he is now associate director for digital commons and Anthropocene. Tristan is deeply concerned about climate change and as such he is the producer and host of the Octet Vert podcast in French, which aims at exploring the complex relationship between digital and climate change.
11:50
At the FOSDEM '24 event, OpenLLM France evolved into OpenLLM Europe, embracing the goal of fostering an open collaborative space to develop partnerships among national initiatives aimed at creating open-source, sovereign, and efficient Large Language Models (LLMs) in the respective languages of each country.
OpenLLM Europe now boasts over 450 active members, receiving significant backing from the academic research community (22% of our members) and nearly 40% of our members are either users or companies specializing in AI.
Following the publication of CLAIRE in October 2023, our new model LUCIE has entered the pre-training phase. With 7B parameters, our primary objective is to address the underrepresentation of the French language in LLMs generally.
We have also incorporated other European languages, including German, Spanish, and likely Italian soon, alongside developing code to enhance the model's reasoning capabilities.
LUCIE is slated for 200,000 hours of pre-training on approximately 96 GPUs within the Jean ZAY machine, a sovereign supercomputer provided by our partner GENCI.
By June, LUCIE will be made available, having undergone transparent and independent evaluation by research teams from CNRS and INRIA.
This presentation will offer an update on the training progress, fine-tuning efforts, and the adoption of the LUCIE model.
Therefore, today in Europe, we have all the capabilities and, I believe with OpenLLM Europe, have generated the momentum, to build a real Open Source and sovereign European LLMs that meet our regulations.
Michel-Marie Maudet
COO of LINAGORA @ OpenLLM Europe
Michel-Marie MAUDET is a leading figure in the Open Source community, co-founding and leading LINAGORA for over twenty years. This company stands as a beacon in the Open Source software and service industry, and is a major private investor in Open Source R&D across France, Vietnam, and Tunisia. LINAGORA offers a significant alternative to global tech giants by providing innovative solutions that empower businesses and governments towards digital sovereignty.
His career started in 1995 at the French Ministry of Defense, diving into systems engineering and discovering a deep passion for Open Source technologies in the early '90s. Michel-Marie has been dedicated to promoting the use of LINUX and Open Source, emphasizing the importance of open standards.
Recognizing the challenges and opportunities presented by Artificial Intelligence, LINAGORA launched LinTO, an Open Source personal assistant, in 2016. 2023, Michel-Marie further advanced his mission by founding the OpenLLM France (https://www.openllm-france.fr/) community, aiming to create a sovereign, transparent, and Open Source French LLM to challenge the dominance of major tech corporations and support the digital independence of France and Europe.
Michel-Marie’s vision extends beyond technology; he sees Open Source AI as a crucial tool for economic growth, job creation, and the competitiveness of strategic industries in Europe. His work champions a new path for digital innovation—one that is open, ethical, and responsible.
12:10
The AI Act, which is the new European AI Regulation set to be adopted in April 2024, establishes a comprehensive legal framework for regulating the commercialization of AI systems. Its rules relate in particular to the transparency of the AI systems, and their strength depends in particular on how an AI system is developed. That’s specifically where Open-Source becomes key in AI development ! By fostering collaboration, transparency, and community-driven innovation, Open-Source enables the responsible and ethical advancement of AI technologies.
This regulation, through its cardinal principle of transparency leads to the creation of an exception to its application for AI system distributed under an Open-Source licence. In this respect, by recalling the conditions under which the Open-Source qualification will be retained, the AI Act specifies the criteria(s) under which it will not apply to AI system distributed under an Open-Source licence.
The purpose of this presentation is to understand the conditions for benefiting from an exemption from the application of the AI regulation for AI tools using Open Source. In this way, we will analyze the definition of Open Source adopted by the AI Act, a definition which emphasises the need for transparency through the desire to encourage developers to create models to accelerate the sharing of information throughout the lifecycle of an AI. This will make it possible to address the specific cases in which AI distributed under an open-source licence is exempt from the application of the regulation, and the direct consequences of this.
Gilles Rouvier
Attorney @ Lawways
Attorney before the Paris Bar since 1995, expert in IT - IP Founding Partner of Lawways in 2006
For more than 25 years, Gilles has developed a specific and specialized expertise, in the sector of new technologies and their development, and more particularly in software, ownership of IP, protection of personal data and IT contract’s. Before creating Lawways in early 2006, he worked with international law firms – August Debouzy, Gide Loyrette Nouel – but also in the legal departments of global industrial and financial groups. His career for several years at the heart of the business, notably at General Electric (GE) in the Medical Systems and Finance activities, has allowed him to acquire a concrete understanding of the needs of companies and an economic vision of legal issues, and to bring real added value to the solutions he offers to the clients of the firm.
Gilles is President of Cyberlex “French association of Law and New Technologies” He’s also President of the Tech and M&A Committee of ITechLaw (a US non-profit organization - “International Technology Law Association”). Ranked in Chambers and Partners 2023 as recognized practitioner in TMT Information Technology
AREAS OF LEGAL EXPERTISE • Intellectual property • IT contracts • Open Source • Artificial intelligence • Personal data • Business secrecy • Web3
DIPLOMAS • Winner of the contest General in Business Law (Panthéon Assas University, Paris II – 1990) • DEA in Business Law (Panthéon Assas University, Paris II – 1992) • DESS in Industrial Property Law (Panthéon Assas University, Paris II – 1994) • US Business Law, Communication (UCLA – 2002) • Certificate of Aptitude for the Profession of Lawyer (EFB – 1994)
LANGUAGES French and English
12:30
🍽 Lunch break
14:00
Chair: Ameni Jebali, Manager @Sofrecom Tunisia
14:00
Local-first community created a fresh new architecture for our world dominated by cloud. In this talk, Andrey, will advocate for local-first architecture, delve into its unique futures, and provide real-world production experience.
This talk is helpful for every engineer because it contains multiple steps to improve privacy. From simple first steps without rewriting the app to profound revisions utilizing local-first architecture- there’s something for everyone.
Andrey Sitnik
Frontend principal @ Andrey Sitnik
The creator of PostCSS, Autoprefixer, and Logux
14:20
A significant source of stress for maintainers and contributors to open source projects is mismatched expectations around credit and feedback for contributions. Sometimes a person makes a contribution representing months of work, only to have a maintainer lightly rewrite it and take sole credit. Other times a maintainer is overwhelmed by work, has no time to review unsolicited contributions, and is accused of plagiarizing work they never saw. And sometimes people game the system by sending large numbers of low quality, computer-generated, or plagiarized contributions to artificially inflate their apparent qualifications.
This talk describes one way to reduce this source of stress: a written contributions policy laying out what contributions are welcome, how they will be handled, and how the credit will be distributed. We will present a contributions and credit policy creation guide written by members of the RIPE Open Source Working Group which can be adapted and reused by open source projects.
The contributions and credit policy guide is available at: https://github.com/contribution-credit/policy
Valerie Aurora
Systems consultant @ Bow Shock Systems
Valerie Aurora is a software engineer with 25 years of experience in open source software, currently working as a systems consultant for Bow Shock Systems in Amsterdam. She began her career as a Linux kernel developer specializing in file systems and networking. As co-founder of the Ada Initiative, she co-wrote and drove the adoption of codes of conduct in open source software. In her spare time, she writes quizzes about networking protocols and watches Dutch reality TV.
14:40
Real-time group communications involve many building blocks to bring functionalities like calls, chats or video conferencing. In an open world, relying on a single actor to supply all the technology required for such services to be live is not recommended. Video conferencing servers are key components that need to be integrated in full-scale digital workplaces. Functions such as conference scheduling or participant management need to be tightly linked with calendars or address books. The Linphone’s team has developed an open source video conferencing server that can be controlled following RFC6503, an open standard designed “to create, manipulate, and delete conference objects”. Therefore, there is no need for proprietary code to integrate conferencing management into a wider system. As an illustration of the matter XCON CCMP intends to solve, this talk begins with an introduction to existing conferencing servers (Jitsi, Zoom, Teams, etc.) and their specific controlling APIs. Next, a quick introduction to this protocol. Then, we present an implementation made by the Linphone team in the Flexisip SIP conferencing server and how to control it from a third-party component. Finally, we conclude this talk by emphasis how open standards improve the resilience of complex solutions based on heterogeneous building blocks.
Jehan Monnier
Cofounder @ Belledonne Communications
After having worked during 9 years in the telecom division of Hewlett Packard, Simon Morlat, the original author of the Linphone project, founded Belledonne Communications in 2010 with Jehan Monnier. Since then, Simon is holding positions in technical direction and management.
15:00
At first glance, it may seem obvious to associate Open Source and Open Science, whose synergies seem natural. Open Science is the unhindered dissemination of research publications and data. Open Source can be seen here as one of the branches of Open Science in the same way as Open Access or Open Research Data. Open Source, which defends the freedom of access to and modification of software, therefore appears to be a perfectly complementary approach, both in terms of providing the tools and platforms for Open Science and in terms of the transparency and openness of results to the community. There are many remarkable examples of this with initiatives such as GitHub and, historically, Mozilla Science Lab. But a more nuanced view, informed by the experience of these projects, particularly in business and public/private relations, shows us that there are obstacles. Cultural differences, intellectual property issues (with a wide variety of licences) and the challenges of funding and commercialising projects all come to the fore. The need for companies to achieve a return on their investment can lead to constraints on intellectual property - or even patentability - that conflict with Open Science. Similarly, laboratories are increasingly seeking to add value to their work and collaborations in order to consolidate their budgets, which are not always sufficient. These constraints can call into question the Open Source nature of tools and results. So we see that challenges remain, including in the management of open data and compliance with publication standards. Overcoming these cultural, legal or financial obstacles in Open Science projects requires a good understanding of the issues at stake for all the partners and the adjustments that need to be made. But this is the only way to build sustainable opportunities and real leadership for the Open Source and Open Science ecosystem in research. By way of illustration, OpenStudio will be focusing in particular on the field of AI and its European challenges, drawing in particular on the experience of the Atlas of Productive Synergies, LongRun and Mellia, research and scientific cooperation projects (four CIFRE theses are currently in progress as part of public/private collaborations).
Kevin Cortial
PhD Data Scientist @ OpenStudio
A graduate of the University of Clermont Auvergne in Mathematics and Applied Computer Science, Kévin CORTIAL went on to study Data Science. After a year at Michelin's research and development centre, he joined OpenStudio in 2020. He is currently working on a CIFRE thesis on graph learning methods applied to industrial resilience with OpenStudio and the Institut Pascal of the UCA.
Jean-Luc Marini
Director of the Agency of Paris @ OpenStudio
With over 30 years' experience in the field of AI within major French and international groups, as well as start-ups, Jean-Luc Marini joined the OpenStudio workforce in 2021 as R&D Director and Branch Manager in Lyon. Jean-Luc Marini is a mathematician, computer scientist and has a doctorate in information and communication sciences. His keen interest in teaching also led him to spend 25 years as an associate professor, responsible for a Master's degree in Information Systems Management at IAE Lyon. He was also a member of the Magellan research centre.
15:20
☕ Coffee break
15:50
New this year : the conference will end with an open debate, giving everyone a voice, and promising passionate exchanges. All participants (attendees, speakers, exhibitors) are invited to participate in the discussion. The vote on the topic gave a majority of votes for "Open Source Funding" (50%), followed by "the role of Open Source foundations" (32%), and "Open Source and CRA" (18%). Please go to the page: https://l.ow2.org/OW2con24Debate, and fill-in the quick survey to give an insight of the views you would like to put forward.
Tobie Langel
Principal @ UnlockOpen
Tobie Langel is a world-leading expert on open source and standardization. He advises some of the biggest names in tech (Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Intel, Cisco), promising startups (Airtable, Postman, GitLab), industry organizations (OpenJS Foundation, OASIS, W3C) and nonprofits (Organization for Ethical Source, Ushahidi, Omidyar Network), pro bono or through his consultancy, UnlockOpen.
Tobie’s unique mix of deep technical expertise, open source and standardization street creds, thorough understanding of IP concerns, industry-wide network, and broad, business-focused strategic perspective makes him an ideal partner when growing thriving open ecosystems that balance private and public interests in pursuit of the common good.
16:30
Closing Session
Pierre-Yves Gibello
CEO @ OW2
TBD