Notes from Policy and Standards program – November 2022

In the month of November we rebooted our public policy mailing list and expanded our Policy and Standards program beyond the EU and into the US.  We thought it would be helpful to share what  our areas of focus are as we look forward to planning for the coming year.

Current Focus

Europe

• The collision between open standards and open source related to standard-essential patents,
• The sustainability of open source software in European government and especially the lack of funding for maintenance of critical components despite investment in bug-finding, and
• The challenges of ensuring public funds result in public code in an environment where tendered outsourcing is the norm.
• The direct and accidental effects on open source of the current wave of legislative proposals including DMA and DSA.

 United States

• Implications for open source projects and community downstream of new executive orders and proposed legislation on supply chain security.

• Watching Senate Bill 4913 with interest
• Participating in conversations regarding supply chain security and implications for the way open source software is developed

• Getting non-profit, public benefit organizations a seat at the table in policy development as an underrepresented component of the full open source ecosystem, and
• Emerging interest in AI/ML policy

International Communities

• OSI is bringing together a network of policy practitioners for information and resource sharing to address common challenges. The Public Policy list is an important element of that intent, as is collaboration with public benefit entities with common interest in the health of open source.

If you’d like to join the discussion please subscribe to the public-policy at opensource.org mailing list.