I was at FOSDEM last week, and there were a few key takeaways from my perspective:
- The drafting of the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is basically complete. OSI and other Open Source communities were committed in 2023 to educating legislators about the existence of communities of software developers that don't put their creations on the market because the voices of these communities had been excluded by the EU Commission. This year we invited the regulators to join FOSDEM again and the results were much more reflective of the Open Source community thanks to that strong push. However…
- Our work is not over. Before the CRA goes into effect, there are a lot more opportunities for Open Source developers to be hampered. We're facing at least another 2 years of hard work with the regulators to make sure that the newly developed standards and satellite regulations don't push us back to where we started in 2023. Speaking of regulations…
- The AI Act is a very complex regulation we'll have to catch up on. There is an exclusion for "Open Source AI" but nobody knows exactly what that's supposed to mean in practice.
This is why the involvement of the broader Open Source community is so important right now. Just before we headed to Belgium, OSI announced a public forum to welcome the broader community to engage in the conversations surrounding AI and the collaborative development of version 1.0 of the Open Source AI Definition. You can read more about the forum in this blog post, and you can comment on the Open Source AI Definition Open: v.0.0.5 here.
Curious what work has already been done toward the mission to create an Open Source AI Definition and how you can get involved this year? Check out this blog: Open Source AI Definition: Where it stands and what’s ahead
Also remember that OSI Board nominations are now open until March 4, 2024. You have to be an OSI member to be a nominee or to vote, so if you need to renew your membership, now is the perfect time!
Stefano Maffulli Executive Director, OSI
I hold weekly office hours on Fridays with OSI members: book time if you want to chat about OSI’s activities, if you want to volunteer or have suggestions. |