From Digital Sovereignty to Sustainability: Why OCX 2026 Felt Different
OCX 2026
Last month (April, 2026), I had the opportunity to participate in the Eclipse Open Community Experience (OCX), and I left the event genuinely energized by the conversations, the people, and the vision for the future of open source collaboration.
First and foremost, thank you to the OCX organizers and leadership team for creating such a thoughtful and inclusive event (more special thanks below).
Digital Sovereignty and Tech Regulation
One of the most important discussions centered around technology regulation and digital sovereignty in Europe. The European Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), along with broader conversations about digital sovereignty and reducing dependence on large technology providers, appeared throughout many discussions and presentations. While many organizations outside Europe may view these as “EU issues,” institutions that collaborate internationally, especially universities engaged in research partnerships, should recognize that these developments will likely affect them directly as well.
I was struck by how many non-EU organizations still seem largely unaware of the implications and risks associated with the emerging policy and political changes. There is clearly growing momentum among EU governments to reevaluate dependence on major commercial platforms, many of which are embedded throughout higher education ecosystems (Apple, AWS, Google, Microsoft, etc.), as well as increasing adoption (and investment) in infrastructure (cities, regions, ministries, and countries like France and Spain). How will the growing reliance on these big tech providers, alongside expanding regulatory constraints, impact cross-campus initiatives, global partnerships, and multi-sector engagements? Eclipse Executive Director Mike Milinkovich’s “State of the Union” presentation reinforced how quickly these conversations are evolving and how strategically important they have become for open source communities, educational institutions, and governments alike. Are we in higher ed paying attention?
Open Source Sustainability - Ongoing Conversations
Another major theme throughout the event was sustainability in open source; a conversation that remains unresolved despite the tremendous amount of attention it receives.
Many sessions explored sustainability through familiar models: grants, sponsorships, institutional funding, consulting, or the creation of commercial service companies around projects. These conversations were valuable and offered useful insights, but I found that many still framed sustainability primarily through the lens of business monetization or short-term funding mechanisms (grants, sponsorships, etc.) rather than long-term project self-sustainability.
Several sessions highlighted this challenge from different angles:
- “At the crossroads: collaborating with public sector French and European OSPOs, and beyond” explored government-supported OSPO initiatives, raising important questions for me, about whether government (or even grant or campus) funding OSPOs alone ultimately ensures the sustainability of the projects they support; is that sustainability for the OSPO or the projects?
- “Your Open Source Project Can Pay Your Bills: Here’s How” focused on building business models around software, important work, certainly, but centered more on building and sustaining a company than sustaining a community-driven project. Indeed, the presentation was for “developers who believe in their open source project and want to be able to work full-time on it.” I’ll admit that this talk worried me that the values of an open source project and a company that maintains it may be misaligned: governance, sole maintainership, competition over collaboration, fauxpen source business models (”open core”), vendor lock-in…
- “What makes an Open Source Project Sustainable? — Finding Meaningful Indicators” examined technical sustainability and maintenance indicators (think CHAOSS), which are critical, though often disconnected from broader operational and financial sustainability discussions. These indicators focused more on the code sustainability (technical requirements and maintenance) than on financial sustainability. The indicators are great observations and can provide valuable insights, but are not particularly useful in and of themselves for financial support unless used to develop a budget and assess maintenance/technical/etc. costs that could then inform the project’s budget, which then needs funding,
- “Navigating the Open Road: Building Sustainable Open Source Contributions” emphasized how organizations can maintain continued contributions to open source, an important perspective, though one still primarily oriented around corporate participation models, which, at the end of the day, helps the company, not necessarily the project(s).
What I found missing from all of these discussions and others (that I attended) was recognition of one of open source’s greatest sustainability models, arguably the first one: that it is often the by-product of an organization’s primary mission, research, operational needs, or professional practice. Developers, technologists, engineers, researchers, and faculty frequently create and sustain open source projects because they directly support their company’s, university’s, agency’s, or institution’s core work. The museum I work for needs a 3D viewer. Let’s collaborate with a university, an aerospace company, and a game studio to make and use one; everybody helping helps everybody. The 3D viewer is a by-product of everyone’s “real job.”
I also found relatively little discussion of “self-sustainability” models — approaches in which nonprofit foundations build supporting business capabilities for non-software services, shared infrastructure, policy, events, security, compliance, or operational support. Likewise, there seemed to be limited attention paid to the sustainability value of shared services and cross-foundation collaboration.
In many ways, the conference reinforced for me that we need to broaden the sustainability conversation beyond today’s dominant funding approaches if we hope to address the ongoing resource challenges facing open source communities.
Apereo at OCX
For our first time at OCX, Apereo projects were fortunate to contribute several sessions during the event:
- Tomáš Müller from Purdue University presented “UniTime Overview: From Research to Practice,” highlighting UniTime's evolution from academic research to a mature, globally adopted scheduling platform.
- Zuzana Mullerova from Masaryk University shared “Course Timetabling with UniTime at Masaryk University,” offering practical insights into how institutions operationalize open source solutions to address complex academic scheduling challenges.
- Inge Donkervoort, Apereo board director, and Tom Reijnders, system architect, both with the Xerte Project, presented “Raising the Bar: How Xerte Achieves a High Standard of Accessibility by Design,” showcasing accessibility as a foundational design principle rather than an afterthought.
- I was also honored to moderate the panel “Seeds of openness: How higher ed grows the future of open source,” alongside Inge Donkervoort, Tonco Tijdeman of Hotelschool The Hague, and Jan Müller of OpenCampus. The discussion explored higher education’s unique role as both a historical incubator for open source and a continuing source of contributors, adopters, researchers, and future developers.
Looking Forward
Overall, I came away deeply impressed by OCX — not only by the quality of the sessions and participants, but by the overwhelmingly positive and forward-looking spirit of the event. There was a strong sense that open source communities are not simply reacting to change, but actively shaping the opportunities ahead.
Thank you again to the Eclipse Foundation and everyone involved in organizing such a meaningful event. I’m already looking forward to attending again next year.
Thank you!
Special thanks to Thabang Mashologu, Gaël Blondelle, and Mike Milinkovich for hosting the event and for their continued vision of building collaborative spaces that bring together open source projects, foundations, businesses, governments, and educational institutions. OCX continues to demonstrate the value of cross-community engagement and the importance of open collaboration across sectors.
I also want to thank Philippe Krief and Aurélie Caron for expanding the co-located research event to include educational institutions and discussions not only about research itself, but also the impact of research on teaching, learning, and administrative open source within higher education.
But especially, thank you to Rosaria Rossini, who worked closely with Apereo to ensure our sessions were successful. Her support with scheduling, communications, logistics, planning, and coordination was invaluable to Apereo and all of the participating projects.
Finally, let me please thank Apereo’s own Jenn Cummings and Michelle Hall for their tremendous work organizing our presence—coordinating speakers, developing collateral, promoting the sessions, and helping ensure everything came together smoothly. Our participation would not have been nearly as impactful (or perhaps even possible) without their dedication and effort.
