So, good afternoon. I'm going to talk about building public private open source ecosystems, focusing
in GFOS's effort to bring together industry academic collaboration. So, I'm Aleksandr
Aleksandr, I'll leave you some of the director of GFOS. I'm also a newcomer to FOS them. GFOS is a
non-for-profit organization. It was built by the majority of Greek universities and research centers,
having a purpose to connect the dots within Greece's open source ecosystem. We've got holistic
definition of what open source and openness is about, not only technologies, but also hardware,
open data and governance.
The flags can move. Anyway, let me start by giving some important context. We see strategic
the strategic importance of open source technologies raising, especially with the context of digital
autonomy and digital sovereignty. And this is not just plain talk. We see history happening
in both sides of that landing. We see recent developments in China and in the U.S.
More than a bit before, our communities need stable sources of funding. This is a big opportunity
to connect the pandemic innovation with what industry needs. We've got pretty good evidence
from the recent Harvard study, which says that companies and enterprises would have to spend
three and a half more times if they are not using open source. But things are not good,
both in the private and the public sector. In Greece, I don't know how many of you are familiar with
what's happening, what we face, big challenges in both private and the public sector. In the public sector,
in Greece, we see, yes, I know it. Sorry for this.
So we see very low penetration of open source solutions. The decision makers and the stakeholders within
the Greek public administration are very keen towards adopting private, private or solutions due
to perceive lower risk. And all the procurement frameworks are very much in favor of
established ventures. The situation, the private sector is not better. We see widespread adoption
but opportunistic use of open source. The tragedy of common is very much in the case in Greece.
There's very little or no contribution back to projects and lack of structural collaboration
between stakeholders and these entails into missing innovations for collaborations.
So what we are proposing, we are proposing a new collaboration framework. We open up our membership
base, currently involving only research institutions and universities. So we open up with a
tired corporate membership based on the revenue of its companies. We've got a special provision
for startups to join us for free for two years and a balance voting system. In other
notes to compromise and alter the original scope of G4s with as academic and research institutions
as shareholders and we deserve two seats in the membership in the board for the private sector.
So what is our value proposition to companies with which we will collaborate, they will have
direct access to academic expertise. Our representatives in academic institutions have a sabbatical
and why not spend this sabbatical and the R&D department of companies that will collaborate
with G4s, we will assist them in policy guidance and we will have joint collaboration efforts
in research projects both in European and national context.
Talent development, we are very active in the context of Google summer of codes and we are very
keen to design a tailored program according to specific needs of companies. It will be something
like Greek summer of code. We are working with specialists in order to create specific
lessons for university course work in integration and we are designing projector songs and why not
let this lessons. So how all this is connected or can be connected with
the EU policy landscape. I think that there is a pseudo dilemma between having as an open
resource community to choose between focusing on European companies and European
champions on the one hand and on the other hand sticking with the global value of the open source
This is a false dilemma. We can have them both. We can strongly invest in core European
open source project that consists of the common infrastructure for example post-gressual
Drupal matrix next clouds among others. Of course, and create a strategy, a solid strategy
at both the national and local and European level for digital public goods with dedicated
if you are fighting. So we can combine the merits of both worlds. Of course, a radical procurement
reform, open by default, a procurement for public, software and why not have my data re why not
mandate my data re open source alternatives evaluation. Let's don't stick on the defensive
and get an offensive. Why not raise the ambition of our community and preference for local
open source vendors service provider. We will try and create a small ecosystem of vendors of
SMEs, of which SMEs that can cooperate with the European counterpart and become
at a small scale at the beginning open source vendors. Thank you very much and I'm open for any questions.
Thank you very much Alexander. I think we will take one question and then we have to wrap up and
get through the next panel, but to the next speaker. If I can already ask Florian Borvac and
Fredrik is deviant and move up on stage and then I'm not sure who had their end up first.
Yes, we are at an informal consultation right now at the stage of an internal informal
we will open up the consultation but we have good prospects. Let's see what happens.
Thank you very much.