Election 2025: Corporate members

I knew OW2 before it was cool OW2 (it was named ObjectWeb) and I was happy to join the board some years ago. I try to share my vision of joining professional Open Source (as Worteks member) and community Open Source (as commiter of several projects like LDAP Tool Box, LSC, LL::NG and FusionIAM) . I strongly believe in the values of cooperation and independence and convinced that OW2 has its place in the ecosystem. I am aware of the new challenges we have and with the help of other members of the board I am sure we can make OW2 even better.

I have proudly worked with OW2 for many years, serving as its elected board president for the past two years. I would be honored to continue serving the OW2 community in 2025.

In an era of increased polarisation and technological protectionism among different countries and regions, I firmly believe that the existence and success of OW2 and other European-founded open source organisations are essential for upholding our shared values. These organisations play a vital role in advancing European innovation, promoting European digital representation, and ensuring European digital sovereignty. 

Europe has long been the cradle of remarkable technological advances and open source projects; however, Europe continues to struggle with a fragmented open source ecosystem, especially compared to other regions such as North America. We often hear discussions about the need to strengthen digital sovereignty in an era characterised by geopolitical rivalries and big tech dominance, still the reality is that there is currently no open source foundation founded in Europe that can effectively counteract these forces, nor provide sufficient ecosystem weight to balance the massive draw presented by the non-European mastodons of the open source world.

While OW2 may not have all the answers, it certainly should be a vital part of the solution. For this, there are three key areas that OW2 must strengthen if it is to remain relevant in these pivotal times:

    Broaden OW2’s visibility within the European industrial landscape. When European companies think of starting an open source project, they should instinctively turn to a European founded open source organisation such as OW2.
    Ensure that the OW2 value proposition aligns with the needs and expectations of its community, not just as a means of increasing membership numbers and thereby strengthening OW2’s financial security but also as a means of increasing the benefit to members derived from network effects.
    Explore the logic of creating OW2 domain “hubs” that provide a logical grouping of interests, collaborative activity, experience sharing, and opportunity generation. Identify areas that are underrepresented or highly fragmented within the European open source ecosystem and offer an opportunity for OW2 to step in and provide value (for example, digital IDs, smart health, decentralised services, city services, sustainable and green IT, digital accessibility, and so on).

I want to be elected again to the OW2 board to help grow the organisation in Europe, attract new members, and serve the open source community in France, Europe and beyond. I hope that you will support me in the election.

The City of Paris has been involved in OW2 for the last decade and would like to ensure this remains, as we benefit from the work done by OW2 and its community, we can also bring our experience and be part of some initiatives, as we did for MRL or GGI. The City of Paris has had a commitment to Open Source since 2002 when it first released open source code for its project Lutece and we strongly share its values. Remaining a member of the board would ensure a balanced membership with the public sector.

We believe the different networks we are involved in are great places to share what we do at OW2 and bring more public administrations to the group.

I developed for the past 10 years open source prototypes for the community. Some of those were directly conceived and developed in accordance with OW2 strategy, for which I used to be a board member for several years. I see joining the OW2 board as a chance to share and collect ideas, as well as to provide a year long experience as an industrial manager.

The European R&D ecosystem has significantly changed since OW2 was created. Fraunhofer is involved in many important European initiatives with Open Source outcomes relevant for OW2 and its members. I want to establish more connections to OW2 members, but my main motivation is to help OW2 and its members to keep the link with the European research community, find new development directions and become more sustainable. OW2 needs to find new opportunities and adapt to the new environment.

Having joined the OW2 board last year, I now have a better understanding of where OW2 stands today, and I'm happy that with the board, we had discussions about where it should go in the future. Thanks to everyone in the outgoing board and to Pierre-Yves for this! I do believe that OW2 has some pretty unique characteristics compared to other organizations, and that we need to keep making the OW2 voice heard. We also need to keep working on refining how to best adapt OW2 to the current and future landscapes, so that this voice stays strong!

I have been at the board in the past two years, my objectives are twofold :

1 - Find new ways to incentivize collaboration and partnership opportunities between members. I believe that a significant part OW2's value lies in its capacity to tie relationships between its members, through networking or joint technological projects.

2 - Make the voice of OW2 stronger in Europe. Today, a significant part of OW2 members are from France, despite OW2's aim at being an international organization. In the current context where EU states are looking to get back control on the software they use, there is an opportunity to secure and develop our position as an organization federating Open Source projects oriented towards business use cases.

Over the past 15 years, XWiki SAS has been involved in OW2 initiatives by participating in research projects (STAMP, FASTEN most recently) or organizing and participating in joint events.