Building Resilience: The Next Decade of Open Source
Session Abstract
Over 25 years, open source has become vital digital infrastructure. However, its future relies on human resilience, not just code. To combat burnout, funding gaps, and new regulations, we must move beyond old methods and address sustainability through global policy, security, and community health.
Session Description
Quietly over the course of 25 years, open source software evolved from a domain perceived as that of only hobbyists into the invaluable backbone of modern digital infrastructure. Sustaining that success for the future will require more than code. It requires resilience: a trait not of technology. but of people. Of community. With increasing regulation around the world, evolving cybersecurity requirements, burnt out contributors, and stagnant corporate participation and funding, how do we ensure the ecosystem’s continued success? The things that have worked for the first decades will not be the things that keep us going. Let’s look together at sustainability not only as a funding problem, but also from the perspectives of global policy changes, security, and other intertwined issues that face open source in the coming years.
