DUBLIN — Europe's open source contributors, according to The Linux Foundation's first-ever survey of them released in September, are driven more by idealism than their American counterparts. The data showed that social reasons for contributing to open source projects were more often cited by Europeans than by Americans, who were more likely to say they participate in open source for professional advancement. A big part of Gabriele (Gab) Columbro's mission as the general manager of the new Linux Foundation Europe, will be to marry Europe's "romantic" view of open source to greater commercial opportunities, Columbro told The New Stack's Makers podcast. The On the Road episode of Makers, recorded in Dublin at Open Source Summit Europe, was hosted by Heather Joslyn, TNS's features editor.
DUBLIN — Europe's open source contributors, according to The Linux Foundation's first-ever survey of them released in September, are driven more by idealism than their American counterparts. The data showed that social reasons for contributing to open source projects were more often cited by Europeans than by Americans, who were more likely to say they participate in open source for professional advancement.
A big part of Gabriele (Gab) Columbro's mission as the general manager of the new Linux Foundation Europe, will be to marry Europe's "romantic" view of open source to greater commercial opportunities, Columbro told The New Stack's Makers podcast.
The On the Road episode of Makers, recorded in Dublin at Open Source Summit Europe, was hosted by Heather Joslyn, TNS's features editor.
Columbro, a native of Italy who also heads FINOS, the fintech open source foundation. recalled his own roots as an individual contributor to the Apache project, and cited what he called "a very grassroots, passion, romantic aspect of open source" in Europe
By contrast, he noted, "there is definitely a much stronger commercial ecosystem in the United States. But the reality is that those two, you know, natures of open source are not alternatives."
Columbro said he sees advantages in both the idealistic and the practical aspects of open source, along with the notion in the European Union and other countries in the region that the Internet and the software that supports it have value as shared resources.
"I'm really all about marrying sort of these three natures of open source: the individual-slash-romantic nature, the commercial dynamics, and the public sector sort of collective value," he said.
Europe sits thousands of miles away from the headquarters of the FAANG tech behemoths — Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google. (Columbro, in fact, is still based in Silicon Valley, though he says he plans to return to Europe at some point.)
For individual developers, he said, Linux Foundation Europe will help give regional projects increased visibility and greater access to potential contributors. Contributing a project to Linux Foundation Europe, he said, is "a powerful way to potentially supercharge your project."
He added, "I think any developer should consider this as a potential springboard platform for the technology, not just to be visible in Europe, but then hopefully, beyond."
The European organization's first major project, the OpenWallet Foundation, will aim to help create a template for developers to build digital wallets. "I find it very aligned with not only the vision of the Linux Foundation that is about not only creating successful open source projects but defining new markets and new commercial ecosystems around these open source projects."
It's also, Columbro added, "very much aligned with the sort of vision of Europe of creating a digital commons, based on open source whereby they can achieve a sort of digital independence."
As geopolitical and economic turmoil roils several nations in Europe, Columbro suggested that open source could see a boom if the region's companies start cutting costs.
He places his hopes on open source collaboration to help reconcile some differences. "Certainly I do believe that open source has the potential to bring parties together, " Columbro said.
Also, he noted, "generally we see open source and investment in open source to be counter-cyclical with the trends of investments in proprietary software. ... in other words, when there is more pressure, and when there is more pressure to reduce costs, or to, you know, reduce the workforce.
"That’s when people are forced to look more seriously about ways to actually collaborate while still maintaining throughput and efficiency. And I think open source is the prime way to do so.
Listen to this On the Road episode of Makers to learn more about Linux Foundation Europe.
Colleen Coll 0:08
Welcome to this special edition of the new stack makers on the road. We're here at the Open Source summit in Dublin, Ireland. Discussions from the show floor with technologists giving you their expertise and insights to help you with your everyday work. Amazon Web Services is the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 175 fully featured services from datacenters. Globally, millions of customers trust AWS to power their infrastructure become more agile and lower costs.
Heather Joslyn 0:47
Hi, and welcome to another on the road edition of the new stacks makers podcast. We're here at open source summit in Europe in beautiful downtown Dublin, Ireland. And I'm here today with Gabrielle Colombo, and it's okay if I call you gab. Absolutely. Okay, great. Thanks. And gab is going to talk about the new organization that he is the the first leader of its Linux Foundation, Europe. We're also going to talk about their first project and a little bit about some of what we've learned from the Linux Foundation's first ever survey of the European Open Source community. So welcome. Welcome, gab.
Gabriele Columbro 1:23
Thanks so much for having me here.
Heather Joslyn 1:24
And I understand you have another job as well as being the new general manager of the Linux Foundation Europe.
Gabriele Columbro 1:29
Yeah, keep myself busy. Yes, I decided that my new gig, which is, as you said, General Manager for Linux Foundation, Europe, newly announced, I have been running Finnes, the FinTech open source foundation for now, about six years. Actually, this is a financial services focused open source collaboration initiative. We started and ran it for four years. And then we merged into the Linux Foundation two years ago in 2020. And it's been a fantastic ride since then.
Heather Joslyn 1:59
Great. So you have a pretty strong connection to the Lynx foundation to begin with.
Gabriele Columbro 2:03
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, the last two years really showed us how the power of having vertical industries collaborating with the broader open source technology sort of landscape that the Linux Foundation represents, you know, has a major, major power.
Heather Joslyn 2:18
So let's start off with a little bit of I mean, obviously, Linux Foundation began in the US, what do you see are some of the differences between the open source community in over on the other side of the pond and here in Europe?
Gabriele Columbro 2:30
It's a really, really good question. And you know, one that is very near and dear to my heart. I grew up here in Europe. I'm Italian. As you can hear from my outrageous Italian, as Jim says,
Heather Joslyn 2:44
I thought you're from the US Midwest. Oh, wow.
Gabriele Columbro 2:47
Well, I from Boston, we can we can accidentally, exactly. I'm still trying to learn that accent. But yeah, you know, I grew up as a real individual contributor, one of my main, some initial, my instance, was to get my Apache address becoming an Apache committer. And so I definitely think that in Europe, that is a very grassroots, you know, passion, romantic aspect of open source. And this is actually something that also our research that you cited, you know, uncovered, you know, as I moved to the US, you know, clearly you can see that most of the foundation's are out of the US patchy Linux, most of the commercial open source endeavors are out of the US, that is definitely a much stronger commercial ecosystem in the United States. But the reality is that those two, you know, natures of open source or not alternatives, I think, you know, as the log for Shell vulnerability has, you know, deeply put us sort of in the limelight, there are issues that are across the board across Europe and the US, and you actually need as much as the individual contributors sort of passion as much as you know, enough corporate contributions, both in terms of sort of commercial aspects, that sort of commercial contribution to foundations as well as sweat equity contributions to ensure sustainability. So I guess to your question, really, the research has validated sort of this hypothesis that yes, there is more of a romantic nature of open source here in Europe. But that is not necessarily alternative to the commercial dynamics around it.
Heather Joslyn 4:21
So it's not an either or situation. I think it's a false dualism. Well, one difference between Europe and the US is that a lot of the major the fang companies, as they call them, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google keeps changing, even though they're around the world. They're based in the US, is there an advantage or disadvantage to having Linux Foundation have an outpost? Oh, kind of away from that big tech giant environment?
Gabriele Columbro 4:50
Look, I do think that sort of, besides the besides the commercial nature of some of these sort of very large, big tech players having an out both in Europe having a dedicated entity in Europe is more so about focusing and really accelerating some of the aspects that we just discussed of the of the European specific landscape. You know, if you pair sort of the grassroots nature that we talked about with, you know, honestly, the European Union and Europe being very much forward thinking when it comes to open source adoption, and certainly, in many cases, even open source contribution, even from the public sector, you know, there are ongoing conversation as to whether all public administrations should only not only use open source, but really contribute to open source, everything that is built by a public administration being open source. And so to me, rather than necessarily focusing on the sort of big tech versus Europe aspect, if that makes sense. It's more about understanding that Europe has different drivers that to your point, there is not necessarily such a big tech presence in Europe. Right. But that doesn't mean that Europe is not a leader in open source is not a leader in policymaking, you know, think about GDPR. You know, it's certainly highly regarded as the, you know, golden standard for data privacy, California and CCPA is adopting very much a copy paste. That makes sense. Yeah. And so, you know, look, I want the naive, it is important to make sure that we give voice to Europe, but that we bring, you know, big tech to the table. And I think if there's a way that this can be achieved is through open source. And if there is a party that can do that is such a global open governance Federation, like the Linux Foundation,
Heather Joslyn 6:36
if I'm a just a developer in Europe, who maybe you know, works at a company works at a government agency work or works as a freelancer, what are going to be the benefits of having having Linux foundation over
Gabriele Columbro 6:47
here. So I zoom might have seen in my keynote yesterday, I'm really all about marrying sort of these three natures of open source individual, slash romantic nature, the commercial dynamics, and really the public sector sort of collective value mandates, really making the best use of taxpayers money, but when I focus on individual developer and you know, again, I was one, I absolutely remember the excitement of, you know, being able to protect the excitement and the freedom to actually be able to partake to a broader community than necessarily just my own development team and my own proprietary, you know, small sort of company. Look, I think there are three primary reasons why I think Linux Foundation Europe is a great move and why, you know, individual developers could be should be involved. One, it does provide a really powerful way to potentially supercharge your project, meaning the Linux Foundation is a global platform, our Linux Foundation, Europe tagline is collaborate locally, innovate globally. That means that by contributing a project to Linux Foundation, Europe, you actually potentially set yourself for hopefully, your project, making it to the global scale and becoming, you know, in de facto standards, I think any developer should consider this as a potential Springboard platform for that technology, not just to be visible in Europe, but then hopefully, beyond you. I think the second reason is I'm very much keen to lean on tradition, Europe operate in a data driven way. So research, of course, was a luxury that I have, as soon as we started with this initiative, we were able to really have a well, you know, a wealth of information coming out of the research that we ran, but also community driven. In fact, I want to make sure that we learn from the community, first and foremost, the next three months are going to be very much a learning experience for me as of course, I've grown up here, but I understand the last 10 years in the Silicon Valley. And so understanding priorities, challenges, and even just dynamics of this region, at regional level and a country level, I think it's going to be super important. We're hosting a roundtable later today, we'll be forming an advisory board, I think individual, I want to encourage individual contributors to have their voice heard, you know, in the very idea of bringing all the constituents together. And then sort of the third main way, you know, despite our survey has identified the renewal of developers participate to open source primarily for fun, more so than sort of career advancement once something that actually we uncovered a lot in the US and some of the other surveys that we ran, including the phenos Stadium, open source in financial services, I still do think that there is a major advantage and career opportunity for individual developers to really play in the broader arena of open source and, you know, strong visibility that the Linux Foundation and its projects have and can give to individual developers. I'm very much a huge fan of of making sure that individual developers are rewarded and incentivized and of course, hopefully properly compensated.
Heather Joslyn 9:54
What about organizations? The study found that I think it's let me make sure I have this correct. fact that 35% of participants said their organization doesn't offer guidance about contributing to open source. Yes. What, although far more offer guidance on using open source, what role do you think the the new organization can play in getting more organizations to develop guidelines for their engineers?
Gabriele Columbro 10:20
It's a really good question. And in order, I think to answer, it might be useful to share a little bit of my personal experience within us, we, you know, when we started fina six years ago, bringing together you know, the likes of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, so not only banks, investment banks, so really, you know, the closest of the closest organizations that you can probably find in the world, you know, having this Italian guy telling them that they should open source and intellectual property was, was a bit of a, you know, let's say, it had a lukewarm reaction time. So for the first few years, our goal and focus has been very much to educate this organization as to even before the how they could contribute meaning which policies they should put in place, right. It's about the why I'm a huge fan about starting with a business value, and you why you should be purchasing to open source and making sure that at sort of sea level at leadership level, there is a very clear understanding of the full sort of spectrum of benefits that you can get out of open source collaboration. So why am I leading with that is because I do see a very similar pattern into how we go about addressing this discrepancy that you've talked about in Europe, even while I do believe that we will continue investing, you know, in the to do group and the Linux Foundation initiatives in enabling hospitals to be more and more effective and more and more strategic in these organizations. I think it all starts with the why we will have to work with the organizations in Europe to continue to level up the the understanding of why they would want to contribute to open source and in my experience, that would actually almost has a domino effect, accelerate the process of them having, you know, a contribution policy that is effective, efficient and aligned to sort of, you know, their goals. And, you know, ultimately, the goal here is to achieve sustainability, because I think that this discrepancy actually does indeed challenge the overall sustainability of the ecosystem.
Heather Joslyn 12:25
Europe is certainly experiencing some turbulent times right now on a geopolitical nature, how might that affect how the new organization works with the EU and countries outside the EU? And do you foresee any challenges there?
Gabriele Columbro 12:39
Well, look, of course, as you say, it's a very turbulent situation. But I am very hopeful in sort of two areas, one, you know, open source has proven to be a great bridge across, you know, competitive organizations, competitors, in same similar industries, nations, the national standards, even regions, you know, both allies and maybe less so allies, you know, we have a very strong representation in the Linux Foundation, both from, you know, Chinese members, US members and European members almost like evenly distributed. So certainly, I do believe that open source has the potential to, you know, bring, bring parties together, but I don't want to be idealistic, realistic here, of course, the second point is the generally we see open source and investment in open source to be counter cyclical, with the trends of investments in proprietary software, for example, just general at spend. In other words, when there is more pressure, and when there is more pressure to reduce costs, or to you know, reduce the workforce. That's when people are forced to look more seriously about ways to actually collaborate while still maintaining trouble and efficiency. And I think open source is, you know, the prime way to do so. So we're not oblivious to of course, the political dynamics, but we're also not a policy organization. Right. So I'm hopeful that actually Linux Foundation Europe can help accelerate some of these conversations, and we should not be sort of overly impacted by the, you know, unfortunately, turbulent situations.
Heather Joslyn 14:15
Finally wanted to ask you about the the new project, the first project that Linux Foundation, Europe is taking up open wallet Foundation, yes. Can you tell us a little bit about about that, and how that's going?
Gabriele Columbro 14:24
Yes, I'm very excited. It's, you know, a very, I think, very important initiative, as Jim said, in his press release, you know, the digital future, you know, goes by digital identity. And so the open wallet foundation is really an effort that has seen, you know, very broad initial support from, I think, over 50 organizations to really build an engine that can provide, you know, sort of up to the point of the last mile, let's say the infrastructure is under digestion, interoperability for multiple industries to build, you know, digital world That's interoperable. I think it's particularly interesting to see that Europe, you know, of course, we started this project, we're thinking to start this project in Europe, because there is a major support from European sort of members as initial sort of supporters for this project. That said, this is not just limited, of course, to European companies very much like LFU, any projects under LFU is open to any any organization in the world. But I find it very aligned with not only the vision of the Linux Foundation that, you know, is about, of course, not only creating successful open source projects, but defining new markets and new commercial ecosystems around these open source projects, but very much aligned also with the sort of vision of Europe of creating a digital commons based on open source whereby they can, you know, achieve a sort of digital independence. And, you know, of course, it's no secret that the main holders of wallets right now are, you know, Apple and Google, right. And so, you know, I think this speaks volumes to how the Linux Foundation and Linux Foundation Europe, you know, can enable the creation of open ecosystems in place of, you know, proprietary or more sort of segregated ecosystem, we all believe in the power of open ecosystem. So I think this is a very promising initiative. And I look forward to its evolution,
Heather Joslyn 16:20
right. And it's not creating standards, it's creating the template to build yes to build.
Gabriele Columbro 16:26
I think that's also that is my move, because you, you know, first of all, building standards is hard participants, standard bodies, and they're amazing. But without the power of the code, without getting it into the hands of developers, you risk very much to kind of go back into the fragmentation or silo sort of implementation that then, you know, has the risk of not being interoperable. So I think starting actually from real concrete code, and also not delivering the whole solution, making sure that you have sort of a platform that then each one can take and develop into a commercial solution. I think it's a very, very smart vision.
Heather Joslyn 17:02
Okay. Well, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks again. And this has been an on the road edition of the new stack makers. And thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time.
Colleen Coll 17:13
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