So I'm trying to summarize what we have learned in this session.
We had a great opening from Toby who kind of explained to us the importance of these
standards that will be written to accompany the legislation.
We had a lot of discussion about the 200 pages of text that is the law.
And we will then have fun reading the 4,000 pages of text that are the implementation
standards and a lot of the details will be in those standards and are still to be developed.
He also pointed out that the CAA has landed now and is not catastrophic, which I think
is an important point to take.
It is also an opportunity for the FOS ecosystem to step up here and to play a leading role
as stewards.
We have a lot more clarity with the separation of roles.
We also have the first time that a major law in a major economic block talks about free
and open source software and describes a specific role for open source software stewards.
So I think that's a win.
Next we had Rob walking us through the wonders of the hardware and software supply chain and
how liability, especially strict liability, can work out in that and highlighting that
the approach in the UAPLD is one of strict liability.
We had a panel where besides the really interesting questions which I will go to in a second,
we also had a very symbolic picture here in the front.
We had the Python Software Foundation sitting in the middle squeezed between the Cyber-Syber-Zerians
Act and the Product Liability Directive.
And I really thought when I saw this, this is kind of a, the picture of what we're seeing
because we have a group of people that is making free software available to the world
trying to do the best and essentially really, yeah, working in the public interest here
and trying to see how to, how can we make this work in the environment of our own regulatory
frameworks.
Also are the highlights here.
I found it indicative in the question to Ben who is going to be a steward and what happens
if the steward is outside of the EU that, first he said, looking through the law, which is
the right recommendation, but he also said this is to be more clarified further down
the road.
Yes it is, but that is just indicative of this uncertainty that we are currently in.
And so it's the right answer, but it means that we need to stay on this topic and we
need to get answers to these questions.
I also thought that the question from the audience about what if we have a very decentralized
open source community, maybe with a legal entity in France, but that's not really controlling
anything that the developers do, it is just coordinating the work.
It was very pertinent because this is exactly the gray zone between being an individual
developer, being a loosely organized community and then being a well organized centralized
community, a more centralized community that clearly qualifies as a steward.
And I think there, it's not just on the lawmakers to make this clear, this is an impact where
the free and open source software community will have to sharpen our own governance norms
to make it more clear which are we in this situation.
So there will be implications on how the communities operate that were clear in, this was one of
my takeaways that was clear in this discussion.
We focused a lot on the Cyber Zillions Act because it was such a pertinent topic recently,
so I was really glad to see the Part Liability Directive here.
Key takeaways that I took from the discussions are you cannot escape the Part Liability Directive,
I hope I'm quoting that right, and I think Oma also was able to say why.
If a law protects the most vulnerable person in the chain, then it can easily exclude others.
Who is the most vulnerable person will probably have to always be accessed in a concrete case.
He also pointed out that an important aspect of EU law making is that all these laws have
review cycles and they're not one-off written and then collect dust and we will have to
live with the consequences.
They will be reviewed and he encouraged us to engage in the review process and to provide
our feedback.
This is probably one of the most important takeaways today for the people in the room
is let's stay engaged here basically.
How am I doing on time?
Two minutes, okay.
We talked a little bit at the end of the discussion period on how will the European Commission
engage with the standards.
Oma pointed out that the European Commission does not write the standards and what the
process will be and that your source community will be encouraged or is encouraged to actively
participate in this.
That's a big takeaway that we need to take.
There was always the question of who pays for the additional bureaucracy, who pays for
the fees to participate in some development organizations.
I think we didn't really get good answers here today but it was made clear that this
is an open issue because our organizations are almost exclusively non-profit organizations
and that's additional cost.
Additional cost requires more fundraising.
I think the question of who pays for this, who pays for this and who pays for this got
repeated a couple of times including in the workshops.
Let's go to, if we have a little time, I summarized a couple of highlights here.
One is a big shout out to our own lawmakers here.
The EU is approachable.
It was here in this room.
It was in multiple panels.
It was willing to answer questions from angry developers.
I really congratulate them to this attitude so thank you for being here.
Another takeaway is why is this room so important because I think it was Toby who pointed out
that we have a very diverse set of stakeholders and normally in the processes the stakeholders
that are well heard are the ones that have the means to do so, the big foundations, the
larger projects and we need to have the hobbyist community, just small like one person enterprises
and all those also like, yeah, involved and that's I think more in this room than in the
discussions until now.
I want to point out one thing and this is in response to Omar who said software is only
one thing out of a million products.
That's true.
Software is also an every product and every product consists of 80% for you know, so software.
That means we're not one in a million.
We're 40% of the overall market if you divide it 50, 50 between hardware and software.
So I think we're totally worth it to be especially considered in the law and I think we do have
the impact that justifies that.
Regarding engagement in standards, last statement here, the EC made a very direct offer to engage.
I think we should take that especially the foundation I speak for the Linux Foundation
here.
We will engage.
There's one really positive signal here.
We've recently been appointed to the multi stakeholder platform for ICT standardization
which is kind of the consulting group to the commission here and we will use our influence
there to bring more free and open software players into standards development.
Regarding that as well, keep in mind that standards development is also a national activity
in the member states.
There will be representatives of your member states appointed into those standards bodies
and it's a great way to engage through where you live and get somebody into that.
With that I would like to close, a big thank you to the panelists, to the moderators and
to all the participants.
Thank you very much.