The first session of the Virtual Routes Colloquium Autumn/winter series hosts Jack Goldsmith, AI Corporate Governance Specialist at the Human Technology Institute (HTI) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).

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Abstract

Open-source software (OSS) underpins more than 90% of modern technology and is critical to both AI and cyber security supply chains. Yet OSS communities remain underexamined as geopolitical actors despite their growing influence on technology governance, security, and innovation. Understanding their motivations, organisation, and methods is increasingly important.

This paper argues that OSS communities are distinct from both state-like technology firms and non-state cyber actors. Their decentralised, transnational, and often pseudonymous nature gives them a dual identity. On one side are visible institutions such as foundations and online platforms that engage with governments and regulators. On the other is a diffuse network of individual contributors, universities, companies, and governments that collectively develop and maintain OSS.

Although geographically dispersed and largely peer-based, OSS communities can exert significant political influence. Through a case study of OSS resistance to the EU Cyber Resilience Act, the paper demonstrates how these networks can organise and shape regulatory outcomes. It concludes that OSS communities do not fit traditional models of digital actors and therefore require new approaches to governance and engagement. In doing so, the paper contributes one of the first international relations analyses of OSS communities and their role in contemporary geopolitics.

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