The Open Source movement promised free, open, editable software. But that movement didn’t anticipate the rise of for-profit services built atop such free tools. Today, you’re more likely to use open source code as part of a paid service than you are to use open source products on your own machines.
That’s a problem. Because when you lose the right to edit code, you give up agency. But in an era of machine learning and AI, it’s an even bigger issue.
Modern computing algorithms consume data, and spit out code. That’s the reverse of traditional computing, where coders wrote software that produced data. So now, we need to think about data sovereignty: How sustainable and open are our data sources?
Finally, in an age of turnkey, ubiquitous computers and discardable hardware, we can’t service our own machines. The right to repair is hotly debated.
Put these together, and we have a crisis in the making. Without open compute, open source, and open data, we can’t have digital sovereignty. We cede our digital futures to others.
In this session, experts from open source and open computing groups look at the rise of the “open stack” of compute, code, and data, considering how governments, NGOs, and organizations of all size can deliver powerful services without lock-in or capitulation.
