On 1-2 February 2025 FOSDEM took place in Brussels, gathering software developers and open source communities to promote free and open source software (FOSS), exchange ideas and learn about the latest developments. This year’s edition featured 79 tracks with more than 1100 speakers who engaged across diverse developer rooms (devroom). The topics ranged from technical to more legal and policy-centred devrooms, such as Government Collaboration, Funding the FOSS Ecosystem, Open Source in the European legislative landscape or Legal and Policy.

We picked up several presentations highlighted below; they can be interesting for exploring the dynamics of public-private partnerships and delving into the EU’s existing legal and policy arrangements for FOSS. 

The talk by Alexandros Melidis in the Open Source in the European legislative landscape devroom, titled “Building Public-Private Open Source Ecosystems: GFOSS's approach in Academic-Industry Collaboration” presented the innovative framework of the Greek FOSS Society to foster the partnership between industries and academic institutions. On one hand, the approach includes measures such as staff exchange programs, targeted career development initiatives and collaborative project development (projectathons and hackathons). On the other hand, GFOSS’s framework stimulates private sector engagement through joint research projects, direct access to academic research and talent pools, academic teaching opportunities and others. 

In the same track the presentation by Alexander Smolianitski (ZenDiS, the German Centre for Digital Sovereignty) and Samuel Paccoud (DINUM, French Interministerial Digital Directorate on “Making Workspaces Work Together (And Across Borders)” discussed cross-EU collaboration. As France and Germany have just solidified a new digital partnership to establish sovereign digital workspaces, the session covered new digital suites  – La Suite Numérique (France) and openDesk (Germany) and cooperation strategies between the projects. 

Also in Open Source in the European legislative landscape devroom, Filipe Jones Mourao, Policy Officer of the European Commission's Cybersecurity and Digital Privacy Policy (H2) gave a regulatory talk on “Presentation by the European Commission on the Cyber Resilience Act” that highlighted the intricacies of the new CRA legislation mandating product security requirements and covers software and hardware. 

In the track of Government Collaboration, Axel Thévenet presented the European Commission's Open Source Observatory (OSOR) Handbook. The guide is created as a practical tool for public administrations in their implementation of open source software, and recently it has been revised following community consultations. 

Some other presentations on public-private collaboration, funding and policymaking that we believe might be of interest include: 

• Building Sustainability: A Case Study in Funding Diversification for Decidim
• Funding FOSS together: Combining public and private efforts
• Digital Commons as Pillars of Digital Sovereignty in Europe
• Why Europe needs the OSAID: Openwashing and the AI act 

You will find more recordings and presentations from FOSDEM soon as they are still being uploaded.