OFA Symposium 2025 and the Launch of the Open Technology Research Network (OTRN)

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The OpenForum Academy Symposium 2025 organized by OpenForum Europe (OFE) brought together researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and open technology leaders for two days of deep inquiry into how open technologies shape our economies, infrastructures, and societies. Hosted at FGV Law School in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this year’s theme “Open Technology Impact in Uncertain Times” captured the urgency and opportunity of openness in a rapidly changing geopolitical and technological landscape.

As a content partner, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) joined forces with the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) and the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), supporting a program that blended academic rigor with practical, policy-relevant insights. This collaboration enabled richer dialogue across sectors and reinforced the shared mission of strengthening global understanding of how open technologies shape markets, governance, AI development, and the digital public sphere.

This year’s Symposium was also marked by the announcement of the Open Technology Research Network (OTRN): a new strategic partnership between OFE, OSI, and OKFN to address current gaps in research on the impact of Open Source and to provide evidence that is critical to public policy discussions.

Highlights from the OFA Symposium in Rio

The OFA Symposium featured four key tracks that reflect today’s most pressing challenges about open technologies:

• Economic Impact of Open: Open technologies drive innovation, lower costs, and create new economic opportunities, but it is important that we are able to evaluate and even quantify their true impact. This track explored the role of open technologies in shaping competitive markets, the impact of funding for open technologies, and the macroeconomic impacts of open technologies.
• Open Technologies and Geopolitics: As technology becomes a central factor in global power dynamics, openness is both an asset and a challenge. This track explored the role of open technologies in shaping geopolitical strategies, trade policies, supply chains, and technological sovereignty.
• Open Source and AI: Artificial Intelligence is transforming industries, and open source code, weights, and data are at the heart of its development. But as AI scales, questions around ethics, accountability, and governance become more pressing, especially as debates swirl around the definition of open source AI. This track explored the intersection of open source licensing and AI, opportunities for open source collaboration in AI, regulatory challenges for open source AI, and the role of openness in ensuring responsible and trustworthy AI innovation.
• Sustainability and Security: Open technology is often viewed as offering alternatives to proprietary solutions and privately controlled technology ecosystems, but it’s at the core of all modern digital infrastructure, meaning it’s only as effective for major actors as it is sustainable and secure. This track explored how open technologies can be funded sustainably, the importance of maintenance, questions of supply chain resilience, and cybersecurity. 

Announcing the Open Technology Research Network (OTRN)

One of the most significant outcomes of the Symposium was the formal announcement of the Open Technology Research Network (OTRN), a strategic, long-term partnership between OFE, OSI, and OKFN. The OTRN will:

• Build a coordinated global research agenda on the societal, political, and economic impact of open technologies.
• Strengthen data quality, research infrastructure, and evidence-based policymaking.
• Co-organize a new annual Open Technology Research Symposium beginning in 2026, expanding the legacy of OFA’s academic convenings.
• Support shared fundraising, networking, and collaborative studies that bridge academia, government, and industry.

“This collaboration represents a significant step forward in building the research infrastructure needed to support informed decision making about open technologies.”  — Deborah Bryant, Interim Executive Director, Open Source Initiative (OSI)

“We aim to build the institutional foundations needed to ensure that open technologies are recognised, valued, and supported as key enablers of innovation and resilience.”  — Astor Nummelin Carlberg, Executive Director, OpenForum Europe

“This partnership will help ensure that reproducible data and research in these areas deliver broad benefits to society.”  — Renata Avila, CEO, Open Knowledge Foundation

Open Technology Research Symposium: Looking Ahead

The 2025 OFA Symposium demonstrated the global momentum behind open technologies, but also highlighted how much work remains to be done. From economic measurement to AI governance, from digital sovereignty to security, openness provides both the foundation and the pathway for a more transparent, resilient, and democratic digital future.

The creation of the Open Technology Research Network represents a major step forward in building the research capacity and institutional collaboration needed to shape that future. OSI has long advocated for evidence-based policymaking, but policymakers, industry leaders, and Open Source communities themselves often lack the empirical data needed to properly assess the societal, economic, and governance implications of openness.

As we transition toward the first Open Technology Research Symposium in 2026, building on the success of three OFA Symposiums (Berlin 2023, Boston 2024, Rio de Janeiro 2025), we carry forward the energy from these events and the collective commitment to deepen our understanding of how open technologies impact our society. Stay tuned for more information during the EU Open Source Week.

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