The increasing relevance of open source software for the digital sovereignty of the European Union and Germany - and what does it mean for the development of embedded systems
Heike Jordan • Dr. Uwe Kracke, emlix GmbHThe European Union and thus Germany depend on technologies and infrastructure which are not domiciled in Europe. This applies for cloud infrastructure, for embedded devices as well as communication and office technologies.
Furthermore, there is a dependency on specific services like NVD (National Vulnerability Database), NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and the MITRE CVE database, all located in the US.
At a time of geopolitical tensions and disruptive technological leaps digital sovereignty is particularly important for economic stability and political freedom of action, but it may be called into question for the EU and especially Germany.
One option for technology companies to gain greater control over digital infrastructure, data flows and software platforms could be open source software, which would be a strategic tool to strengthen independence, transparency and a sustainable upgrade of innovative speed.
The talk examines the central role of open source software for digital sovereignty from the European and German perspective. Focus will be placed on industrial embedded devices with their specific demands, extended lifecycles and growing requirements on security. Based on specific examples it will be outlined how critical dependencies to non-European IT providers can be reduced by various measures in different fields of action of technology management.
Thus, the lecture will provide impulses: How can open source software reduce technological dependencies? Which economic benefits can be generated by collaborative development and the reusability of code? Which steps need to be taken to integrate open source software into a technology strategy?
Short Bio
Heike Jordan and Uwe Kracke both are managing director and shareholder of the emlix GmbH. Among other things, Heike is responsible for all embedded open source projects with a highly regulated context since more than 15 years. Uwe is in charge of for example project acquisition but also for open source compliance and the lifecycle maintenance customers.
