Thoughts on Governance

Having good open source project governance allows us all to collaborate and work together to build more sustainable, healthy and successful projects. It's something I'm particularly passionate about, and I've frequently written about it here on this blog. I collected all of those links in this post: Good Governance for Open Source Projects. Writing those posts made me realize that I hadn't given a full presentation about governance in a while, so I was excited to have the opportunity to speak about Proactive Governance to Build Sustainable Open Source Projects at the Linux Foundation Open Source Summit NA in Minneapolis in May 2026. The slides and video for that talk are now available.

While I spend more time talking about open source project governance, I've also started thinking more about public governance and how open source can be a key part of a digital sovereignty strategy. But the open source impact on public governance goes beyond just digital sovereignty, which is why I was so excited to be invited by OpenGov Africa to talk more about the intersection between open source and public governance last week. The slides and video for that talk are also online.

Related Resources:

• Good Governance for Open Source Projects
• 4 Minute Governance Overview Video
• Digital Sovereignty Runs on Open Source
• United Nations: OSPOs for Good Day
• UN Open Source Week Part 2: Digital Sovereignty and Resilience
• Open Source Software Driving Digital Resilience, Sovereignty, and Sustainability
• The Impact of Funding for Sustainable Open Source Projects
• Funding Open Source Sustainability at CHAOSScon and FOSDEM