This workshop brought together scholars, practitioners, and developers interested in exploring the increasing role played by open source software in digital societies around the globe. The workshop employed the concept of “thinking infrastructurally” about open source software to identify the relevant technical, social, and organizational aspects of open source software development and maintenance. We analyzed the ways in which “legal technologies” such as licensing and liability regimes facilitate the open source ecosystem and the ways in which they might contribute to or may alleviate the under-maintenance of certain forms of open source software. Governments and international organizations increasingly use, procure, and fund open source software and face distinct challenges in the OSS ecosystem. At the same time, the global dimension of open source software development, use, and maintenance calls for transnational governance solutions that takes the interests of all affected stakeholders into account. The workshop explored the ways in which different commons frameworks, foundations, standard-setting organizations, and “non-jurisdictional maintenance hubs” might be part of the solution to address the under-maintenance of open source software.

We gratefully acknowledge the support we received by the Ford and Sloan Foundations’ shared fund on critical digital infrastructure research.

See the conference program for more information.