~/talk

Open Source Is a Sewer

on YouTube 36m
Talkat Open Source Summit Europe 2025 · on Tuesday, 2025-08-26· at 16:20· Elicium 2A (Elicium Level 1)· [open-source, policy-and-regulation]

speaker

name:Powen Shiah
links:none on file

resources

video:https://youtu.be/LZvIRt-20ww
slides:none on file

summary

Modern digital foundations are often kept running by tiny teams or single maintainers — Daniel for curl, Piotr Christian & Volkan for Log4j, Sarah for Nominatim, Richard at Yocto — while governments historically build and fund sewers and rails (London sewers finished 1875 for £6.5m; Amsterdam connects its last house to sewers in 1987). Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency uses public procurement via the sovereign tech fund, co-creates milestone-based contracts, and runs one-year fellowships to pay maintainers without creating permanent dependence, arguing for digitale Daseinsvorsorge as public infrastructure.

AI-written summary · about

chapters (6)

  1. 0:00Why this talk title
  2. 1:26Open source maintainers
  3. 9:32Pressure on ecosystems
  4. 13:05Governments fund physical
  5. 18:26Digital infrastructure responsibility
  6. 21:37Q&A

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