On 30 May, Jan Oleszczuk-Zygmuntowski, Ph.D. announced the launch of the Alliance of Friends of Free and Open Source Software, or SPOIWO for short (meaning a binder). Dr Oleszczuk Zygmuntowski saw the need to unite Polish open source businesses, free and libre organisations, and community members under a single banner.
“As an economist, I saw and felt a strong absence of the voice of free and open communities and experts in the spaces where digital sovereignty is discussed,” he says of the decision to launch the Alliance. “I was in rooms with other economists and lawyers, digital activists, representatives of public health or youth issues, and even journalists and the media, but we were always missing the perspective of those who build the infrastructure, and not just try to regulate it.”
SPOIWO has an open membership structure – any legal entity or private individual can apply to be a member, and the organisation already has the backing of several large FOSS communities and businesses. Since the announcement, SPOIWO has been growing rapidly – “like every emerging initiative, it just snowballs,” says Oleszczuk-Zygmuntowski. Linux enthusiasts and hackers were the first to catch on, and now over a dozen new organisations and several hundred individuals expressed their interest to join.
For now, the goal of the Alliance is to become a reliable and trustworthy partner for the government. The project’s ambition is not “to scare the government,” because public administration is already aware of the issues around technological dependencies. Rather, the government lacks the necessary technical expertise to pursue digital sovereignty, and his hope is that SPOIWO could fill this competence gap.
Poland’s quest for digital sovereignty
This announcement comes at a crucial time, as the Polish government is reckoning with the scale of structural, technological dependencies of its public administration on proprietary, non-European technologies.
In an early June speech announcing the plans for a “digital sovereignty test” for public administration, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk remarked that Poland’s digital dependencies cost well over EUR 10.5 billion in 2024.
The cited number comes from Oleszczuk-Zygmuntowski’s own research into Poland’s digital trade balance. The country “spends too much money by relying on those [external] solutions, making it easier for us to get trapped into the network effects and build dependencies,” he explains.
Hoping for long-term success
SPOIWO’s 10-point declaration lays down the Alliance’s founding principles, which purport free and open source software to be the best path towards greater technological independence.
The declaration proclaims that the digital sovereignty of citizens, organisations and the state is possible only with open and free software, and that state authorities should lead by example by “creating friendly laws, educating, using open and free software, and conducting dialogue with the environment that creates it.”
Dr Oleszczuk-Zygmuntowski hopes that by injecting the initiative with the ideals of democracy and social cooperation, SPOIWO will become a permanent fixture in conversations around digital sovereignty in Poland.
