iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

…Irish gov was distracted by Brexit for years. We need for that not to happen again.

000

Q: Data protection and CEOs lining up behind the current American administration. Is there an opportunity for Ireland to position itself within Open Source at the EU? A: a) John: this could definitely happen since there’s been a dynamic shift on the tech side b) John maybe offer Leitrim to the US?…

100

…like buying a round to contribute to the craic. We don’t do enough to call out good behavior and the value it creates d) Clare says increased Skills training is also needed.

100

…Medical devices are shifting to more open software and hardware so we could be looking for lessons there b) Dermot remembers when classical Internet was a new idea. Collaboration exists in pockets. It’s also a philosophy and an ideology c) Kathryn thinks there are parallels in Irish society….

100

Q: From the floor…Open Source was a massive change and insight for the questioner when he first started contributing. What structures do they need to put in place? Contributions aren’t just code. A: a) John says companies who have contributed know how to do it but we could do more to prepare…

100

Dermot says find one partner who can collaborate with you to make 25k profit on both sides. But also Ireland doesn’t spend nearly enough at a government level. We need to change the story of Ireland, taking the strikes out of our past and bringing culture forward to marry it with our tech output.

100

Q: What can we actually do? A: a) John says think about where you have a strong niche and look for locally offices of leaders in that niche. IDA can make introductions b) Kathryn says create resources to find like-minded companies, and help individuals advertise their skills locally c)…

100

A: Dermot: Believes Ireland needs to be shown how to leverage Open Source. Don’t start with a moonshot. Build trust from the start. Ireland could build a catalog of proven companies. We need to create more developers who have the skills to work in an Open way.

100

Q: Kathryn: Still believes that Open Source has a “marketing problem”. IMHO she just doesn’t get it but she’s far from unique in this small country. She thinks Open Source is not “building from scratch”…so she still doesn’t get that consulting body shops are always borrowing from Open Source.

100

Q: Clare: FYSE is an association designed to bring together Telco sector players. Can you say something about that work? A: John: We’re trying to get them to do their platform collaboration in Ireland. Hopefully it should be a pattern for future similar efforts www.fyuz.events

fyuz.events

Fyuz 2024

000

First panel discussion of Main Track at inaugural National Open Source Summit: Dermot Casey IRDG, Kathryn Lynch Innovation Ireland, John Durkan IDA, Moderator Clare Dillon…(an Irish panel to discuss increasing collaboration in the Irish Tech sector).

210

Q: What about forks? A: Bill H: The first rule of forking is, Don’t Fork The second rule of forking is, See the first rule. The third rule of forking is if you must fork, be prepared to do some heavy lifting and honor the original project as much as you can.

010

Q: EU is defining “Stewardship”. Is this a key concept? A: Bill admits not much knowledge of EU policies, but in general it may help to have that type of endorsement.

100

Q: Can you use a license like Apache for the whole life of a project? A: Yes, and there will be stories about how you solve conflicts.

100

Community Etiquette Lessons: -Be courteous, -Don’t flaunt your title, -Don’t be a drive-by committer, -Start small, build trust …

100

(Note, not sure why I’ve lost thread. there are now two “replies” to my last post that I can’t see) @support.bsky.team ??

000

Open Governance by a 3rd party with a reputation as a good steward is vastly preferable to direct hosting of a project within a corporate space. This is why IBM supports Linux Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, etc.

000

Free as in Puppies. As a deep pocket, you need to factor in long-term support of the bets you make. Inference in AI models are the most expensive part of the system. WatsonX needed inference and used one from TGI. Last year they changed the license, but VLLM was a new entrant with an Open license…

000

From a Skills perspective: reputation can be quickly acquired by donating code to Open Source projects. You prove both your technical chops and your ability to collaborate with others. Make your developers into heroes (and don’t try to make them anonymous).

220

Users interact with applications (on a phone for instance) but if you’re working on a platform it’s important to capture hearts and minds of developers. It’s 1000x harder to do that if you’re not Open Source. PyTorch has 100,000 developers who already know it.

100

Potential benefits? 1) Speed of innovation 2) Potential cost savings in development 3) Interoperability. First movers can control a large community (For better or worse, OpenAI is the de facto API)

100

IBM is all-in on Open Source for several reasons, but #5 - “Leveraging an open source codebase allows you to focus more resources on differentiating enhancements” is a huge reason. Story about the evolution of Watson from 100% proprietary to mostly open. This fell out of @innersource.bsky.social

100

There have also been investments in @apache.org, @kubernetes.io, @pytorch.bsky.social, and many other projects. They typically target things they need for their own customers…but they are contributing to the gestalt of Open Source in so doing.

100

IBM Invests $1 Billion in Linux » Linux Magazine

Next up is @billhiggins.bsky.social VP of WatsonX and Open Innovation from IBM. He’ll be talking about how IBM does Open Source. By the late 1990s IBM had developed an opinion that Open Source (especially Linux) merited a $1 billion investment in Linux in 2001. www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/...

linux-magazine.com

Big Blue writes a big check for Linux server and cloud development.

300

Q: Academia’s rhythm causes change of leadership on University-led projects. Also provosts come and go. How do we navigate this? A: Develop a broad set of contacts. Over time continuity mechanisms will emerge, but it will take time so for now you have to build the bridges.

100

Q: How do you deal with slowness of funding against pace of change in Open Source? A: There’s a rise of VC community funding which is very interesting.

100

Q: How can Universities support enhanced Security required by today’s governments? A: Managing risk is something we study. The EU is making changes in their risk profile by fostering Open Source. Researchers are drawn to OSPOs because they circumvent classical checks and balances…

100

Mandatory slide about Open Source AI and the recently minted Open Source AI Definition. AI is not software. It is has meta components that complicate licensing and determining whether a given project is also “open source”. Open Forum AI at CMU is an effort to recalibrate and aid collaboration.

100

The conversation about Process vs. Product helps clean up some issues that can be addressed by an OSPO. There are choices that need to be made when spinning up an Open Source project. Failure to make a choice is also a choice and will have downstream ramifications when you go to productize.

100

He’s currently running through the various streams of work he has spun up at CMU. Tech Transfer is one of the likely homes for Open Source at a University, although Open Source is at odds with Tech Transfer that leans on proprietary IP management (policing patents developed by researchers).

In the Main Track, @sayeedc.bsky.social is talking about Open Source in Academia. I’ve known Sayeed for several years now. He started the first OSPO at Johns Hopkins University Library. He’s working now at Carnegie Mellon University continuing his great work fostering open collaboration.

221

summit.openirelandnetwork.com

Still at the inaugural National Open Source Summit in Dublin, Ireland. Now covering some of the breakout sessions.. summit.openirelandnetwork.com

National Open Source Innovation Summit

LOL, well the only country she cited was…Denmark FWIW

010

Kathryn thinks Ireland would benefit from a compromise…contracts that look more like wedding vows than war treaties, and a shared belief in a long view.

010

Most Irish make their most important agreement based on 3 simple terms (a) for better, for worse b) for richer, for poorer, c) until death do us part)…Innovation partnerships need a change in Ireland…What if it was like dating?

100

Rural Ireland (at least the cow farmers) tendency to initial mistrust. Nordic countries don’t rely on handshakes and “who you know”. Instead they build systems of trust and cultures of collaboration. There are way too many levels of self-protection in a typical Irish agreement to collaborate…and yet

200

Last speaker of the morning is Kathryn Lynch, Vice Chair of Innovate Ireland. She’s started letting us know that she considers FOSS to be “Overly scented with patouli oil”. She seems to be modifying that impression. Ireland has only 30% of the collaboration partners found in Scandinavia. Why?…

100

Recently, EU/EC have both crafted official regulations and have funded actual Open Source projects (under the goal of “digital sovereignty”)

100

Open Source Study - OpenForum Europe

It showed that Open Source contributes 65-95 billion euros annually to the EU GDP. The global figure is 8.8 trillion! openforumeurope.org/open-source-...

openforumeurope.org

She wanted to impress policy makers in Brussels that household name companies were already investing in Open Source. In 2020 the European Commission put out its first report on Open Source Strategy Report. Fraunhofer and OFE subsequently delivered a study that could justify action.

Next up is Sachiko Muto, Chair of OpenForum Europe and currently affiliated with the Research Institutes of Sweden. Since 2007, when she met Vint Cerf at her first FOSS conference (who famously said “All power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely”). The first big issue: choosing a desktop!

The Ten Principles | UN Global Compact

He says building the team within the UN was the easiest ever because enthusiasts came out of the woodwork. Their principles: 1) Open by Default, 2) Contribute Back, 3) Secure by Design. unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/m... They are looking for endorsements.

unglobalcompact.org

The Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact take into account the fundamental responsibilities of business in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption.

They have a monthly community call as well which they use to recognize Open Source Heroes within the UN. He’s giving the example of a contributor, a Dept of Education inspector in Côte d’Ivoire, who extended Moodle to make video conferencing possible during the pandemic.

Within the UN they did a lot of work on changing their internal culture to be able to connect meaningfully with Open Source culture. There are 60,000 UN staff…and they have an internal speaking series called “Mind The Gap” which is reaching way more staff than expected.

Omar started out working on tooling to trace terrorist organizations on a global level. This was a proprietary project and he became disenchanted with the exigencies of proprietary software development. Open Source allowed cross-collaboration!! Figuring out how to do the culture piece was the hard..

100

United Nations Millennium Development Goals

Next is Omar Mohsine, of the CIO’s office and the Office of Emerging Technology at the UN. 1999 Kofi Annan started the MDG (www.un.org/millenniumgo...) which was such a success that a successor project, the SDG was chartered in 2015 sdgs.un.org/goals

un.org

Bank of Montreal & JP Morgan are examples of FinTech companies who are citing Open Source in annual reports or other public venues.