Open sesame for software

This report builds on previous research by the Atlantic Council and others, as well as the collected insights of the Open-Source Policy Network, to argue that public policy can address the systems’ shortfalls by approaching open source software (OSS) as infrastructure. Making policy to support and sustain OSS as infrastructure helps view this code from a place of fear of security vulnerabilities to one that understands OSS as a critical component of an efficient software ecosystem….

When policy focuses only on terrible, potential outcomes, its ideas tend to reflect that bias toward fear, but this need not be the framing for OSS. Open source enables and solves much more than it imperils. Its security is as much a guarantor of continued value to users large and small, from individuals to national intelligence agencies, as it is a bulwark against malicious intent.

While OSS has come back to attention as an issue of national policy in the EU and, indeed, become one for the first time in the US in some ways as a product of fear and calamity, opportunities run much deeper…. This report proposes clear models for sustained OSS support and offers guidance on how governments in the US, EU and nations across its member-state constituents can implement such models.

From ‘Avoiding the Success Trap: Toward Policy for Open-Source Software as Infrastructure’, Atlantic Council