The Nuit des Acteurs du Numérique Azuréens returns to Inria in Sophia-Antipolis on Tuesday 13 May 2025. This year, you'll be immersed in the world of Open Source, the driving force behind global innovation.

🌍 Open source makes the world go round - why shouldn't you?
On the programme: fascinating discussions with international experts, including Huawei, Baylibre and OW2; as well as interactive sessions to get YOUR opinions on open source. Join this not-to-be-missed digital event on the French Riviera!

[French version]

Nuit des Acteurs du Numérique

Date: mardi 13 mai, 2025, à partir de 18 heures.
Lieu: INRIA, 2004 Rte des Lucioles, 06560 Valbonne

La Nuit des Acteurs du Numérique Azuréens fait son grand retour le Mardi 13 mai 2025 à l’Inria de Sophia-Antipolis. Cette année, plongez dans l’univers de l’Open Source, moteur de l’innovation mondiale.

L'open source fait tourner le monde - pourquoi pas vous ?
Au programme : des échanges passionnants avec des experts internationaux, notamment Baylibre, Huawei et OW2 ; mais aussi des sessions interactives pour avoir VOS avis sur l’open source.
Rejoignez cet événement incontournable du numérique sur la Côte d’Azur !

Agenda et inscription

18h00 : Accueil & mot d’ouverture

18h10 : Keynote d’introduction : L’open source gouverne le monde

Intervenant international invité par Baylibre (Patrick Titiano)

18h30 : Table ronde : Souveraineté numérique et open source : une évidence…

Intervenants : Vincent Danno (Huawei) – Vincent Burgevin (Tas Cloud Services) – Patrick Duverger (Antibes) – Rémi Ronchaud (Inria Academy)
Animée par Pierre-Yves Gibello (OW2). 

Résumé : Les logiciels libres et open source ne sont pas seulement dans plus de 85% de nos smartphones. Déjà omniprésents dans le cloud, ils envahissent désormais le paysage de l’IA générative. Ils se propagent dans les applications, dans les réseaux et serveurs d’entreprise, de collectivités territoriales, dans les infrastructures des prestataires cloud et des infogérants.
A l’heure où les incertitudes géopolitiques pourraient remettre en cause la possibilité même d’avoir accès aux technologies propriétaires cloud dont beaucoup dépendent aujourd’hui (individus comme entreprises), quelle place l’open source peut-il jouer pour nous faire regagner une souveraineté numérique nécessaire, au même titre que peut l’être la gestion de l’eau potable ou de l’électricité.
A qui confier ses données et traitements en toute sérénité aujourd’hui ?
L’open source est-il gage de souveraineté et d’autonomie stratégique ?

19h00 : Table ronde : L’open source et les entreprises

Intervenants : Pascal Flamand (Janua) – Raphael Semeteys (Worldline) – Patrick Titiano (Baylibre) – Cédric Ulmer (France Labs)
Animée par Christian Paterson (OpenUp)

Résumé : L’open source est très répandu dans les entreprises, mais de l’autre côté du miroir, d’autres entreprises en vivent.
Cette table ronde fait intervenir des acteurs de l’écosystème open source qui expliqueront leur business model et débattront des avantages et inconvénients de l’approche open source.
Qu’il s’agisse d’un modèle éditeur, expertise, conseil ou accompagnement, de multiples possibilités existent, et nous aborderons aussi comment s’assurer que les clients comprennent les modalités de financement de ces modèles, et les avantages que cela leur rapporte.
Depuis plus de 40 ans, l’open source est un des exemples majeurs d’économie circulaire qui fonctionne et qui fait avancer le monde, il faut mettre en lumière ceux qui y contribuent et leurs relations avec les acheteurs et utilisateurs.

19h30 : Ateliers d’intelligence collective

Ces ateliers interactifs et collaboratifs visent à recueillir les retours d’expérience et les visions des participants sur l’utilisation et l’avenir des logiciels open source.
Ces ateliers permettent d’explorer des problématiques spécifiques et de co-construire des pistes de réflexion et d’action.

20h15 : Cocktail de clôture

Un moment convivial et de networking pour clôturer cette soirée !

Programme complet et inscription

Présentations et photos

🎞️ Presentation slides

After the success of the first edition, AlpOSS is coming back in 2025 ! 

AlpOSS "Alpes Open Source Software" is a local conference on open source software, organized at the premises of the town of Echirolles (near Grenoble). 

This event is the result of a collective initiative of three local digital players with varied profiles: Belledonne Communication (publisher of the Linphone open source solution), the town of Échirolles and OW2 for the community side. 

Its aim is to create links between suppliers of innovative open source technologies and users, to discuss collaboration models and business models, and to structure and revitalize the local ecosystem.

For more information please visit the website: https://alposs.fr/

🎬Video replay

Presentation slides

All slides in PDF used in AlpOSS presentations can be found in the program. 

FOSDEM 2025

Date: 1-2 February 2025
Venue: ULB Solbosch Campus, Brussels  

Applications for community booths are being evaluated, including OW2 and cascade funding projects where OW2 is involved. 

Don't miss this opportunity to meet with several OW2 community members, among multiple open source projects and experts, and enjoy together inspiring sessions in Brussels. 

In order to prepare your agenda, check out the Open Source Week website where you'll find all colocated events during this unique open source week in Europe, including:

• the Software Heritage Symposium & Summit, on Jan. 29
• the CHAOSScon EU 2025, to monitor health in open source projects, on Jan. 30
• the EU Open Source Policy Summit 2025 organized by Open Forum Europe on Jan. 31
• the Workshop on Open Source key areas for Digital Autonomy on Febr. 1

We are looking forward to seeing you there.

OSXP 2024

• Press Release including projects showcased (🇫🇷)
• Open Source Experience 2024 Photos

Event Preparation

As every year, OW2 and its community will be largely visible during OSXP.
We will organize a community booth, and Antoine Mottier, OW2 CTO, is part of the Program Committee. 

To find more about Open Source Experience 2024, please visit: https://www.opensource-experience.com/en/.

Visit us Booth #C20!

Come visit us during OSXP, we'll be pleased to welcome you and introduce the various projects and technologies presented on our booth. 

Project	Main capabilities
	CiteLibre  is part of the Lutece software suite provided by the City of Paris, to help loval administrations implement a broad range of digital services, right out of the box. City of Paris is Corporate Member of oW2 and Lutece part of OW2 code base.
	NGI Zero Commons Fund is a cascade funding project coordinated by NLnet created to share 21.6 million euros of R&D on technology commons. This effort is proposed by a large group of european organisations, academia, and non-proft organisations, including OW2.
	NGI Search  is a program from the European Commission  aiming to bring forth the next innovative software for searching, discovering and exploiting data on the internet.
	Murena is producer of the deGoogled operating system /e/OS and lead of ALLMA, an innovative tool to evaluate and integrate open-source LLMs into open-source forks of Android.
	Datafari Enterprise Search enables to find data wherever they are, whatever they are. Datafari comes with many connectors, a big data architecture, advanced use of Articifial Intelligence and Machine Learning to optimise Relevancy. Datafari is funded by NGI Search.
	Spare Cores, a Python-based open-source ecosystem, offers standardized inventory and performance evaluations for compute resources of public cloud and server providers. Spare Cores is funded by NGI Search.
	The OSS Good Governance initiative is a joint effort led by OW2 and many partners from the OSPO Alliance to grow awareness and expertise on how to properly use and contribute to open source software.

Attend our conferences

• December 4, 12:20 to 01:05: An alternate way to Gafam for Europe? About the EC NGI funding and how it empowers the ecosystem.
  Moderator:Pierre-Yves Gibello OW2 CEO
  Speakersseveral NGI Search projects: Gaël DUVAL (E FOUNDATION & MURENA)) ; Renaud Chaput (Mastodon CTO); Manon Corneille (Open Food Facts); Ludovic Dubost (XWiki SAS).
  Abstract: Faced with the data capitalism embodied by the American and Chinese Big Tech firms, another sovereign and free path is opening up in Europe: decentralised, interoperable commons based on open source, supported by a “broader social economy” ecosystem including businesses and academics with the support of public funds. This is the aim of the European NGI fund (Next Generation Internet): to support the ecosystem through cascade financing, accessible to small players who are too unstructured to obtain subsidies. A number of NGI award-winners have come here to talk about their use cases, what drives them and what’s at stake: Mastodon, /e/OS, Open Food Facts, CryptPad. OW2 is also involved in NGI, on the funding distribution side – as are other foundations, including NLnet, FSFE and APELL: this role underlines the importance of foundations as relays between the ecosystem and the political sphere. So it’s time to impose an alternative, European-style narrative – and it can be done!

• December 5, 11:30 to 11:50: Navigating the financing jungle.
  Speakers: Pierre-Yves Gibello OW2 CEO and Julien Paris - Cofounder and developer - multi .
  Abstract: Financing an open source project like Datami, from POC to maintenance, remains a long, uncharted journey that is specific to each project. Datami started out as a public open source project with financing from a range of sources: an ANCT grant in 2021 and the European NGI fund in 2024, but also from services provided to associations or open source contributions since 2019. Depending on the iterations, we continuously reinvent the financing strategies, and try out new, unexplored avenues such as SaaS or other co-financing systems that we adapt to our supporting structure and team. After years of experimenting, we believe that there are still avenues that neither we nor the institutions have yet opened up. One of these avenues is to imagine a form of collective management organisation – a “shared commons fund” – loosely inspired by the system invented by Beaumarchais in the 18th century to provide economic support to the publishing sector.

• December 5, 13:30 to 14:15. Round table "Unlocking the Strategic Value of Open Source in Business".
  An open discussion between members of the OSPO Alliance around what it takes to really make the best of open source for companies and organisations.
  Speakers: Nicolas Toussaint (Moderator, Orange), Silona Bonewald (leadingbit solutions), Sébastien Lejeune (Thales), Simon Clavier (SNCF) and Philippe Bareille (City of Paris). 

About OW2 Community Booth (Practical information for OW2 members and partners)

If you are an OW2 member, please consider joining us and sharing the village to showcase your projects and solutions. The Community village will be ideally located along OSXP main entrance and access to conference rooms. It has the capacity to welcome up to three/ four members on a total exhibition size of 18 sq.m. The illustration below gives an idea of the booth set up. 

The package includes (see also the illustration below):
✅ global signage and visibility as an exhibitor (entry on OSXP exhibitor directory)
✅ individual counter + stool
✅ the blue carpet
✅ the generic OW2 visual on partition including OW2 member logos
✅ individual signage for each booth with member logo and tagline
✅ a display monitor
✅ to be shared: brochure holder and meeting space (table)
✅ An optional visitor badge scanner.

Our booth location will be: # C20.

About Open Source Experience:
Led by Systematic Paris Région, Open Source Experience is the meeting place for the entire free software sector, which brings together more than 6 000 professionals for 2 days! A place for technological exchanges, meetings and business opportunities dedicated to open source and all open digital players.

SFScon 2024
November 8-9, 2024
Venue: NOI Techpark, Bolzano.
https://www.sfscon.it/

The South Tyrol Free Software Conference, SFSCON, is one of Europe’s most established annual conferences on Free Software. SFSCON promotes the use of Free Software in digital infrastructures as a tool to achieve greater innovation and competitiveness. Here decision-makers and developers meet, learn and get inspired.

RIOS, as OW2 associate organization will represent OW2 and the OSPO Alliance at SFScon 2024. 

Visit us on the OW2 booth run by OnMyDisk and SpareCores, two projects from the NGI-Search initiative. 

OW2 Track Agenda

 
Schedule: Friday November 8 at 16:40.
Room: Seminar 4. 

Talk #1: How to set up an Open Source Program Office? Get insights and use cases from the OSPO Alliance

Video: Watch the video
Schedule: Friday 8, 16:40 to 17:00.
Speaker: Valentina Del Prete, Seacom, RIOS.

Abstract: The Good Governance Initiative (GGI) developped by the OSPO Alliance proposes a methodological framework to assess open-source awareness, compliance and governance in any kind of organizations, helping them to structure and improve the use of FOSS towards an OSPO. This presentation will highlight the main progresses and new features achieved since last year's introduction at SFScon, such as the translation of the GGI Good Governance in five languages, the recent Success Stories presented in the OnRamp meeting series, and many more. 

Talk #2: Decentralized Search Over Decentralized Storage

Video: Watch the video
Schedule: Friday 8, 17:00 to 17:20.
Speaker: Alexey Volkov, On My Disk founder, software engineer with background in telecommunications.

Abstract: In this session, we will explore an innovative decentralized search system developed in collaboration between On My Disk, a personal cloud storage solution, and PeARS, a self-hosted search engine and an NGI Searchfounded projects. This system is designed to enable user-friendly, AI-powered, multilingual search capabilities directly over a decentralized storage environment, empowering individuals to manage and search their data across devices without relying on third-party servers. By combining cutting-edge AI with a robust, local-first approach, this solution allows users to maintain complete control over their data, ensuring secure, fast, and personalized search results in a user-controlled environment. Learn how this technology is setting a new standard for privacy and autonomy in data storage and retrieval.

Talk #3: Optimizing Cloud Compute Resources with Spare Cores

 
Video: Watch the video
Schedule: Friday 8, 17:20 to 17:40.
Speaker: Gergely Daroczi, PhD, author of a book on data analysis.

Abstract: Spare Cores, an NGI Search founded project, is a vendor-independent, open-source, Python ecosystem that offers a comprehensive inventory and performance evaluation of compute resources across cloud server providers. We start all server types publicly (GHA) to run hardware inspection tools and benchmarks for different workloads. Our findings are published as open data and open source tools to help you identify and optionally start the most cost-efficient instance type for your specific use cases (e.g. ML model training or CI/CD pipelines) in your cloud environment. Additionally, Spare Cores provides a seamless SaaS solution built on this open source ecosystem, managing the entire lifecycle of containerized batch jobs without requiring direct vendor engagement.

See the OW2 track agenda on SFScon website: https://www.sfscon.it/tracks/ow2-track-2024/. 

LibreOffice and Open Source Conference
Date: October 10-12, 2024.
Venue: Belval, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
Webiste: https://conference.libreoffice.org/2024/

The LibreOffice and Open Source Conference is a meeting point for FOSS communities. It is preceded by an open day for the LibreOffice community member meetings on 9 October 2024.

This year the Conference is not only a meeting point for the global LibreOffice community to but also an opportunity to welcome organizations and institutions creating, working with and promoting Free and Open Source Software.

In addition to the talks, presentations and workshops related to LibreOffice the agenda will include proposals from other projects, communities and organisations. 

The OW2 project Mercator will be there.
The OSPO Alliance will also be presented with a talk in the program. 

Open letter initially published in French by the Petites Singularités association, translation by OW2 - with French original version below.
To sign it: please publish it on your web site (French, English or both), then add yourself in this table.

The European Union must keep funding free software

Since 2020, Next Generation Internet (NGI) programmes, part of European Commission's Horizon programme, fund free software in Europe using a cascade funding mechanism (see for example NLnet's calls). This year, according to the Horizon Europe working draft detailing funding programmes for 2025, we notice that Next Generation Internet is not mentioned any more as part of Cluster 4.

NGI programmes have shown their strength and importance to support the European software infrastructure, as a generic funding instrument to fund digital commons and ensure their long-term sustainability. We find this transformation incomprehensible, moreover when NGI has proven efficient and ecomomical to support free software as a whole, from the smallest to the most established initiatives. This ecosystem diversity backs the strength of European technological innovation, and maintaining the NGI initiative to provide structural support to software projects at the heart of worldwide innovation is key to enforce the sovereignty of a European infrastructure.
Contrary to common perception, technical innovations often originate from European rather than North American programming communities, and are mostly initiated by small-scaled organizations.

Previous Cluster 4 allocated 27 millions euros to:

    "Human centric Internet aligned with values and principles commonly shared in Europe" ;
    "A flourishing internet, based on common building blocks created within NGI, that enables better control of our digital life" ;
    "A structured eco-system of talented contributors driving the creation of new internet commons and the evolution of existing internet commons" .

In the name of these challenges, more than 500 projects received NGI funding in the first 5 years, backed by 18 organisations managing these European funding consortia.

NGI contributes to a vast ecosystem, as most of its budget is allocated to fund third parties by the means of open calls, to structure commons that cover the whole Internet scope - from hardware to application, operating systems, digital identities or data traffic supervision. This third-party funding is not renewed in the current program, leaving many projects short on resources for research and innovation in Europe.

Moreover, NGI allows exchanges and collaborations across all the Euro zone countries as well as "widening countries"¹, currently both a success and and an ongoing progress, likewise the Erasmus programme before us. NGI also contributes to opening and supporting longer relationships than strict project funding does. It encourages to implement projects funded as pilots, backing collaboration, identification and reuse of common elements across projects, interoperability in identification systems and beyond, and setting up development models that mix diverse scales and types of European funding schemes.

While the USA, China or Russia deploy huge public and private resources to develop software and infrastructure that massively capture private consumer data, the EU can't afford this renunciation.
Free and open source software, as supported by NGI since 2020, is by design the opposite of potential vectors for foreign interference. It lets us keep our data local and favors a community-wide economy and know-how, while allowing an international collaboration.
This is all the more essential in the current geopolitical context: the challenge of technological sovereignty is central, and free software allows to address it while acting for peace and sovereignty in the digital world as a whole.

L’Union Européenne doit poursuivre le financement des logiciels libres

Depuis 2020, les programmes Next Generation Internet (NGI), sous-branche du programme Horizon Europe de la Commission Européenne financent en cascade (via les appels de NLnet) le logiciel libre en Europe. Cette année, à la lecture du brouillon du Programme de Travail de Horizon Europe détaillant les programmes de financement de la commission européenne pour 2025, nous nous apercevons que les programmes Next Generation Internet ne sont plus mentionnés dans le Cluster 4.

Les programmes NGI ont démontré leur force et leur importance dans le soutien à l’infrastructure logicielle européenne, formant un instrument générique de financement des communs numériques qui doivent être rendus accessibles dans la durée. Nous sommes dans l’incompréhension face à cette transformation, d’autant plus que le fonctionnement de NGI est efficace et économique puisqu’il soutient l’ensemble des projets de logiciel libre des plus petites initiatives aux mieux assises. La diversité de cet écosystème fait la grande force de l’innovation technologique européenne et le maintien de l’initiative NGI pour former un soutien structurel à ces projets logiciels, qui sont au cœur de l’innovation mondiale, permet de garantir la souveraineté d’une infrastructure européenne. Contrairement à la perception courante, les innovations techniques sont issues des communautés de programmeurs européens plutôt que nord-américains, et le plus souvent issues de structures de taille réduite.

Le Cluster 4 allouait 27 millions d’euros au service de :

    « Human centric Internet aligned with values and principles commonly shared in Europe » ;
    « A flourishing internet, based on common building blocks created within NGI, that enables better control of our digital life » ;
    « A structured eco-system of talented contributors driving the creation of new internet commons and the evolution of existing internet common« .

Au nom de ces enjeux, ce sont plus de 500 projets qui ont reçu un financement NGI0 dans les 5 premières années d’exercice, ainsi que plus de 18 organisations collaborant à faire vivre ces consortia européens.

NGI contribue à un vaste écosystème puisque la plupart du budget est dévolue au financement de tierces parties par le biais des appels ouverts (open calls). Ils structurent des communs qui recouvrent l’ensemble de l’Internet, du matériel aux applications d’intégration verticale en passant par la virtualisation, les protocoles, les systèmes d’exploitation, les identités électroniques ou la supervision du trafic de données. Ce financement des tierces parties n’est pas renouvelé dans le programme actuel, ce qui laissera de nombreux projets sans ressources adéquates pour la recherche et l’innovation en Europe.

Par ailleurs, NGI permet des échanges et des collaborations à travers tous les pays de la zone euro et aussi avec ceux des widening countries¹, ce qui est actuellement une réussite tout autant qu’un progrès en cours, comme le fut le programme Erasmus avant nous. NGI0 est aussi une initiative qui participe à l’ouverture et à l’entretien de relation sur un temps plus long que les financements de projets. NGI encourage également à l’implémentation des projets financés par le biais de pilotes, et soutient la collaboration au sein des initiatives, ainsi que l’identification et la réutilisation d’éléments communs au travers des projets, l’interopérabilité notamment des systèmes d’identification, et la mise en place de modèles de développement intégrant les autres sources de financements aux différentes échelles en Europe.

Alors que les États-Unis d’Amérique, la Chine ou la Russie déploient des moyens publics et privés colossaux pour développer des logiciels et infrastructures captant massivement les données des consommateurs, l’Union Européenne ne peut pas se permettre ce renoncement. Les logiciels libres et open source tels que soutenus par les projets NGI depuis 2020 sont, par construction, à l’opposée des potentiels vecteurs d’ingérence étrangère. Ils permettent de conserver localement les données et de favoriser une économie et des savoirs-faire à l’échelle communautaire, tout en permettant à la fois une collaboration internationale. Ceci est d’autant plus indispensable dans le contexte géopolitique que nous connaissons actuellement. L’enjeu de la souveraineté technologique y est prépondérant et le logiciel libre permet d’y répondre sans renier la nécessité d’œuvrer pour la paix et la citoyenneté dans l’ensemble du monde numérique.

Dans ces perspectives, nous vous demandons urgemment de réclamer la préservation du programme NGI dans le programme de financement 2025.

¹ Tels que définis par Horizon Europe, les États Membres élargis sont la Bulgarie, la Croatie, Chypre, la République Tchèque, l’Estonie, la Grèce, la Hongrie, la Lettonie, la Lituanie, Malte, la Pologne, le Portugal, la Roumanie, la Slovaquie et la Slovénie. Les pays associés élargies (sous conditions d’un accord d’association) l’Albanie, l’Arménie, la Bosnie Herzégovine, les Iles Féroé, la Géorgie, le Kosovo, la Moldavie, le Monténégro, le Maroc, la Macédoine du Nord, la Serbie, la Tunisie, la Turquie et l’Ukraine. Les régions élargies d’outre-mer sont : la Guadeloupe, la Guyane Française, la Martinique, La Réunion, Mayotte, Saint-Martin, Les Açores, Madère, les Iles Canaries.
In this perpective, we urge you to claim for preserving the NGI programme as part of the 2025 funding programme.

¹ As defined by Horizon Europe, widening Member States are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lituania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Widening associated countries (under condition of an association agreement) include Albania, Armenia, Bosnia, Feroe Islands, Georgia, Kosovo, Moldavia, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkey and Ukraine. Widening overseas regions are : Guadeloupe, French Guyana, Martinique, Reunion Island, Mayotte, Saint-Martin, The Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands.