Open Future Foundation

🔓 The European Commission's proposed Open Digital Ecosystems Strategy marks a turning point in how we think about digital sovereignty. In our latest analysis, Aditya Singh and Alek Tarkowski examined the submissions to the EC's call for evidence. What emerged is a clear message: fostering open digital ecosystems is no longer just about open source licensing—it's about stewardship, reciprocity, and sustaining the communities that maintain our critical digital infrastructure. Key insights from the responses: 🔹 Beyond code: Digital sovereignty requires supporting the full ecosystem—including open data commons like OpenStreetMap that can power public AI. 🔹 Procurement as strategy: Public spending can be leveraged to ensure that value flows back to communities, not just commercial actors. 🔹 Commoning matters: Digital Commons aren't just freely available resources—they're infrastructures that require collective stewardship and public investment. This shift—from viewing open source as an industrial input to recognizing it as a Digital Commons—is essential for building resilient, democratic, and genuinely sovereign digital infrastructures. Read our full analysis: https://lnkd.in/gtQ_45eZ

A new Open Digital Ecosystems Strategy, discussed in the EU, will most certainly give a boost to open source development. Yet consultations on the planned strategy revealed another key theme for the strategy: the Digital Commons. The idea shows up across a striking range of responses — and not just from the usual suspects. Some come from organizations active in open source development - they use it to highlight the collaborative nature of their work. And to say: open source is not just about adding an open license to code; it's about productive communities that need to be supported and sustained. And then there are organizations working on other types of commons - projects like Wikimedia, Open Street Map, Zenodo, Wikidata, Open Food Facts. As one response notes, Europe is a powerhouse of Digital Commons initiatives - only they go unacknowledged in European policy debates. The latest Open Future Foundation analysis, by Aditya Singh and me, digs deeper into the results. https://lnkd.in/dYHbJMUQ

Where is the public in digital public infrastructure? 📅 Join us next week, February 26, at 11:00–12:00 CET for a webinar exploring what is driving more assertive digital policies across jurisdictions as diverse as India, Brazil, and the European Union. How are governments reshaping digitalization? What promises are being made and what's missing from the equation? Event agenda: Introduction by Zuzanna Warso Presentation by Mila Samdub of his comparative research examining digital public infrastructures in India, Brazil, and the EU (link to the paper in the comments) Expert response and discussion with Ramya Chandrasekhar.  + Audience Q&A 🎟️ Save your spot now: https://lnkd.in/dCBsRg7w

Europe's Open Internet Stack is taking shape — and the building blocks it's made of should reflect what Digital Commons communities actually need. The NGI Commons consortium is running a survey to gather practitioner input on priorities, gaps, and governance realities that will feed directly into recommendations for DG CNECT. If you build, fund, or govern digital commons in Europe, take 20 minutes to make your experience count — the survey closes 8 March:

CommonsDB Feasibility Study Part 2: Building Trust at Scale. Have you seen the results of our latest feasibility study? This is a major milestone in creating decentralized infrastructure for rights information. Working alongside Liccium, Europeana, Wikimedia Sverige, and Institute for Information Law (IViR), we've proven that verified, trustworthy rights data can work at scale: ✅ 300,000+ verified declarations deployed ✅ Cryptographically signed, machine-readable metadata ✅ A decentralized trust model that keeps institutions in control This study demonstrates how we're building a Public Domain registry that prioritizes transparency, institutional autonomy, and interoperability—with plans to scale to millions of declarations by mid-2026. 📥 Explore the full study to learn about our operational insights, legal framework, and next steps: https://lnkd.in/e5FMA8fN

Who Controls Europe’s AI Future? And how the Gigafactories Bet Shapes the EU’s AI Trajectory? Will Gigafactories support the “distinctly European AI ecosystem” announced by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen a year ago at the AI Action Summit in Paris? Or will they become an expensive contribution to AI trajectories defined by companies driving the prevailing AI race narrative? As we approach the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Zuzanna Warso takes a close look at these questions. The analysis traces how the vision of AI Gigafactories is being operationalised, the central role assigned to “technology infrastructure suppliers,” the resulting risks of dependency and lock-in across AI hardware and software layers, and the challenge of mobilising sufficient and appropriately aligned downstream demand. This piece kicks off Open Future’s Steering AI Investment line of work. The project interrogates how investment decisions (not regulation alone) shape the development and direction of artificial intelligence in the EU, situating these dynamics in a broader global context. It looks at the core assumptions underpinning current AI development trajectories, examines who benefits from these choices, and explores alternative pathways for steering AI investment in ways that support economic, social, and environmental sustainability. https://lnkd.in/dN8cikCw

How can Wikimedia continue its work as world's collective intelligence platform, in the age of AI? This was the framing question for a sensemaking roundtable hosted by Wikimedia CH, Open Future Foundation and IMD Business School. The conversation brought together 20 Wikimedians, AI developers, data scientists, data governance experts, journalists, and researchers to explore key challenges and tensions. Topics included: * Wikipedia's knowledge production at a crossroads * Democracy and information integrity in the AI age * The paradox of openness in knowledge commons * The emerging "new knowledge loop" where AI mediates access to knowledge Curated by our Alek Tarkowski and Ilario Valdelli, the meeting surfaced perspectives on how Wikimedia's role as a public, human-governed knowledge infrastructure may evolve in the age of AI. Read the full report to explore these insights on knowledge commons: https://lnkd.in/eStN9q-m 

The push for "European alternatives" to Big Tech platforms is gaining momentum—but what does that actually mean? Following the recent Grok scandal and concerns about algorithmic amplification of harmful content, 54 MEPs have called for European social media alternatives. Meanwhile, "W" was announced at Davos as a potential contender. But here's the thing: simply hosting platforms in Europe won't solve the fundamental problems we face. In our latest blog post, Aditya Singh explores what alternatives should look like: 🔓 Decentralized and federated architectures that give users meaningful agency.  🛡️ Robust trust and safety mechanisms designed for unbundled infrastructures. 🏛️ Public funding to ensure safety and curation functions aren't captured by commercial incentives. ⚖️ Alternative business models that don't rely on surveillance-driven engagement. European alternatives must be more than geographically sovereign—they need to represent genuine alternatives to the extractive, engagement-maximizing logic of dominant platforms. Read the full piece: https://lnkd.in/ehTqGs7n

🚀 Join us at FOSDEM 2026 this weekend in Brussels! Our Senior Policy Analyst, Aditya Singh, will speak at the session "Power to the Public Stack: Governing Europe's Digital Commons" on Sunday at 9:35 CET. Aditya, Dr. Lea Beiermann (Partnership Lead at Zentrum Digitale Souveränität (ZenDiS)), and Emma GHARIANI (Head of the Open Source and Digital Commons Division, Direction interministérielle du numérique (DINUM)) will explore: - How to support long-term sustainability for open source public infrastructure? - What capacity barriers still block open source adoption? - What governance models enable meaningful stakeholder participation? The conversation focuses on the newly founded European Digital Infrastructure Consortium for Digital Commons (DC-EDIC) and its role in building a sovereign tech stack for Europe's public sector. 📍 Track: Open Source & EU Policy  📍 Room: UA2.118 (Henriot)  📍 Time: 2 February, 9:35–10:10 AM More details: https://lnkd.in/eP486xvT

📬 Our latest newsletter is here—exploring why Europe must look beyond the "AI race" and build a Public AI ecosystem that truly serves its citizens. In this issue: 🔹 Public AI for Europe: A new policy brief co-authored by Alek Tarkowski and Felix Sieker proposes a European public AI ecosystem built on three pillars: universal access to compute, data, models and applications; mission-driven investments guided by public needs; and democratic control through meaningful oversight and public funding. 🔹 Two Futures for the Internet: At the start of 2026, the internet stands at a crossroads between artificial scarcity and openness. Paul Keller's new piece at Tech Policy Press examines how current choices around AI, access, and infrastructure will shape the information ecosystem for the coming decade. 🔹 MEPs Call for European Social Media Alternatives: Following the recent Grok scandal, 54 MEPs signed a cross-party letter urging the Commission to support European alternatives to dominant platforms. Decentralized and federated platforms like Mastodon and Eurosky offer promising pathways forward. 🔹 Plus: Upcoming events including Wikimedia Futures Lab (30 Jan–1 Feb) and FOSDEM 2026 (31 Jan–1 Feb), our new report on Digital Public Infrastructures with a webinar on 26 February, and recommended resources on Public Domain Day, AI licensing, and Wikipedia's 25th anniversary. Not subscribed yet? Read the full issue and sign up to receive future newsletters in your inbox: https://lnkd.in/eWriQQzf