Newsroom | Linux Foundation EU

Linux Foundation Europe Newsletter - December 2025

Written by Linux Foundation Europe | Dec 17, 2025 6:00:00 PM

Welcome to the December 2025 edition of the LF Europe Newsletter. 

In this latest edition of the LF Europe newsletter, you'll discover news and announcements from LF Europe, updates from our projects, highlights from recent events and summits, new education opportunities, and a preview of upcoming events.

>> Read on to stay informed, engaged, and connected with the vibrant LF Europe community.

Contents


Exciting news + announcements from LF Europe

  • European Standardisation Panel Survey (Deadline: 31 January 2026).
    • The European Commission has launched the second edition of the European Standardisation Panel survey to collect input from industry and stakeholders on standardisation needs to boost innovation and European competitiveness. Standards help bring innovation to market, support technology development, generate economic opportunities, contribute to sustainability goals, and build consumer trust in the safety of new technologies.
    • The survey targets large companies, SMEs, start-ups, and experts involved in research, innovation, and standardisation across Europe, aiming for balanced representation across sectors and technologies. It will support the EU Standardisation Strategy, alongside previous studies and the Code of Practice in the European Research Area.
    • >> Learn more and take the survey now
  • OpenAgri & AgStack Launch Pancake for AI-Ready AgTech

    • Backed by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research program, the OpenAgri Project has joined forces with the AgStack Foundation to strengthen Europe’s role in open, interoperable digital agriculture. At the center of this collaboration is Pancake, a new open source, AI-ready core designed to unify farming services, reduce vendor lock-in, and accelerate innovation across the sector. The initiative addresses Europe’s fragmented AgTech landscape with free, interoperable infrastructure that works even in low-connectivity areas. With solutions like the Irrigation Management Service alone estimated to save up to €3.1 billion annually across European agriculture, the impact is both technological and economic. Learn more.
  •  LF AgStack Foundation Summit

    • On November 20–21, global leaders gathered in the Netherlands for the AgStack Summit 2025 to shape the future of open source AI and Digital Public Infrastructure for agriculture. Mirko Boehm, Senior Director for Community Development at Linux Foundation Europe, joined the discussions on building an open, interoperable “Operating System of Food” to support sustainable, data-driven farming worldwide.
  • Digital Commons Policy Summit 2025
    • The Digital Commons Policy Summit 2025 took place on November 20–21 in Brussels, bringing together policymakers, regulators, funders, and practitioners to chart a unified path for Digital Commons in Europe. Organized by the NGI Commons Horizon project in close collaboration with the European Commission, with participation from LF Europe, the summit served as a key moment in Europe’s digital transformation and the pursuit of digital sovereignty.
    • Key topics included Digital Commons at scale (including the EDIC), the Open Internet Stack, and bridging the gap between bottom-up innovation and top-down regulation. Participants highlighted the need for human-centric, open, inclusive, and trustworthy infrastructure as essential foundations for a resilient and competitive Europe.
  • Gabriele Columbro Joins Josh Bressers on the Open Source Security Podcast to Talk CRA, Policy, and the Future of Open Source

    • Gabriele Columbro, General Manager of Linux Foundation Europe and Executive Director of FINOS joined Josh Bressers on the Open Source Security Podcast for a deep-dive conversation on the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), open source regulation in Europe, and the growing collaboration between major open source foundations.
    • Gab shares first-hand insight on how the CRA evolved, the importance of cross-foundation cooperation, the rise of digital sovereignty in Europe, and the critical need to support sustainable open source ecosystems. This is a must-listen for anyone navigating the future of open source policy, governance, and security. Catch the full conversation.
  • Bridging the Open Source Gap: From Funding Paradoxes to Digital Sovereignty
    • Europe has one of the world’s strongest open source developer communities and yet captures only a fraction of the commercial value it creates. In a recent podcast conversation, Gabriele Columbro, General Manager of Linux Foundation Europe & Executive Director of FINOS, joined Olimpiu P. of InfoQ to discuss the funding paradox in European open source, digital sovereignty, and why open collaboration may be the last truly global innovation engine in today’s geopolitical environment.
    • The discussion explores why Europe has 1.6x more developers than the US or China, yet 4x less funding, how commercial open source depends on sustainable business ecosystems, and what the Cyber Resilience Act means for maintainers, manufacturers, and SMEs. The conversation also highlights rising infrastructure risks across the software supply chain and why distributed, neutral, and well-funded infrastructure is now a strategic priority.
    • At Linux Foundation Europe, our mission remains clear: collaborate locally, innovate globally supporting digital sovereignty without fragmenting the global open source ecosystem. Listen to the full conversation.
  • BITKOM Working Group Standardisation
    • On 25 November, Mirko Boehm, Senior Director for Community Development at Linux Foundation Europe, presented at the BITKOM Working Group on Standardisation. The session focused on the role of open source in standards development. While BITKOM has historically represented SMEs with proprietary models, the meeting reflected a growing openness to open source collaboration in shaping future digital standards.
  • European Resilience Summit – Paris, France - 10 December 2025
    • At the European Resilience Summit in Paris on 10 December 2025, Mirko Boehm, Senior Director for Community Development at Linux Foundation Europe, represented LF Europe in the key panel Europe’s Digital Backbone. Alongside Philippe Ensarguet (VP of Software Engineering, Orange), Sergiu Petean (Founder & CEO, Innovation Sovereignty Advisors) , and Thomas Di Giacomo (CTO, SUSE) and moderated by Per Ploug Krogslund (Senior Director, Docker), the discussion focused on how open source ecosystems and sovereign cloud architectures enable Europe’s digital resilience. The panel highlighted interoperability, transparency, and vendor independence as essential foundations for long-term technological sovereignty.
    • Mirko’s participation highlighted LF Europe’s active role in shaping Europe’s digital sovereignty through open collaboration.
  • Fintech Open Source Developer Day by FINOS - api days - 11 December 2025
    • At the Fintech Open Source Developer Day by FINOS during apiDays Paris, Mirko Boehm from Linux Foundation Europe presented “Open Source Foundations and European Digital Sovereignty.” His talk explained how initiatives like IPCEI-CIS and the proposed European Sovereign Tech Fund aim to strengthen Europe’s control over its digital infrastructure. He described what open source foundations actually do, how they govern projects, and why global collaboration matters more than fragmentation. Mirko emphasized that true sovereignty comes from knowledge transfer, active contribution, and the ability to modify and fork code, not from building parallel European-only systems.
  • NeoNephos: Building a Sovereign Cloud Native Technology Stack - Peter Giese, SAP
    • Have you already watched this session from the Linux Foundation Europe Member Summit 2025? In his talk, Peter Giese from SAP explains how NeoNephos is building a sovereign, open source cloud-native technology stack for Europe. He shows how Europe’s dependence on non-European cloud providers led to the IPCEI-CIS initiative and the creation of NeoNephos as a foundation-backed, community-driven effort. The session highlights how Gardener enables a true “write once, run anywhere” model across hyperscalers, regional clouds, private clouds, and the edge. With strong adoption and a fast-growing developer community, NeoNephos is shaping the future of Europe’s sovereign cloud. Watch the session.
  • What is the real state of open source in Europe today?
    • In this Linux Foundation Europe Member Summit 2025 talk, Hilary Carter from LF Research presents a data-driven view of where Europe stands on open source maturity, governance, funding, and executive engagement. She outlines key challenges, including commercialization gaps and the cost impact of regulation, while also pointing to strong momentum in sovereign AI and public-sector investment such as Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund. The session offers a clear snapshot of both the risks and the growing opportunities for Europe’s open source future. Watch the session.The State of Play of Open Source in Europe - Hilary Carter, LF Research
  • Linux Foundation Europe at FOSDEM 2026

    • Linux Foundation Europe is excited to participate in FOSDEM 2026, one of Europe’s most important gatherings for free and open source software communities, taking place in Brussels.
    • This year, LF Europe will showcase a wide range of global and European-led open source projects in cloud, telco, energy, embedded systems, security, and more. Expect talks, demos, and insights from projects like CNCF, LF Energy, OpenSSF, RISC-V, Carbyne Stack, NeoNephos, and LF Research.
    • By the time you read this, the devrooms will have announced their talks, so be sure to explore sessions on CRA, digital sovereignty, SBOMs, robotics, and more.
    • FOSDEM is free to attend, no registration needed. Just turn up and join the conversation! Learn more.

LF Europe Projects: Featured news


Lunch time @ OSS Europe 2025 (Amsterdam)

ELISA Project

  • Recap: ELISA Workshop – Munich, Germany 2025
    • The ELISA Workshop Munich 2025, held from 18–20 November at Red Hat’s offices in Grasbrunn, Germany brought together industry, academia, and open source leaders for three days of deep technical collaboration on safety-critical Linux systems. Sessions covered everything from kernel verification, software requirements, and traceability, to hypervisors, functional safety tooling, aerospace and automotive use cases, and continuous compliance with SPDX safety profiles. ELISA contributors shared practical tools, research, and real-world architectures that show how Linux is increasingly used in regulated environments. The workshop highlighted Europe’s growing leadership in regulated open source innovation.
    • The workshop concluded with a strong momentum and a shared commitment to advance open source safety practices through tighter collaboration and clearer standards. Read the recap blog.

NeoNephos

  • What an exciting year 2025 it has been! We started the year by launching the NeoNephos Foundation in March. Nine months later we have set up all the organizational bodies, our projects are making steady progress and we have grown to 15 members across all tiers. We are well positioned for the next year and wish everyone a happy 2026!

Margo

  • Preview Release 1 (PR1) is now available, marking a major milestone toward delivering interoperable lifecycle management at scale across the edge ecosystem. PR1 will offer vendors and developers an early technical preview of the Margo specification, including an open-source sandbox for prototyping applications, devices, and fleet managers. 
    • Our newest blog post provides an early look at how PR1 helps define application packaging, hosting, and fleet management, enabling the community to begin validating interoperability use cases and explore deployment workflows across multi-vendor environments. 
    • PR1 is focused on community engagement and validation, supported through a structured feedback program for both members and non-members. 
    • >> Visit our website to get started
  • Margo Community Now on Discourse
    • To support collaboration during the Preview Release 1 (PR1) rollout, the Margo community has moved from Discord to a new Discourse forum. The platform offers a clearer structure for discussions, feedback, and resources. Join the new forum.
      • Discord will remain available briefly during the transition.

OpenSSF

  • The OpenSSF will be onsite at FOSDEM 2026 on 31 January–1 February 2026, sharing a stand with Linux Foundation Europe. The team will highlight its latest security projects and lead conversations around the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).More details will follow as the event gets closer.
  • The 2025 OpenSSF Annual Report is now available, highlighting a year of major progress in strengthening the security of open source software. The report covers key achievements across education, security tooling, vulnerability reporting, research, and public sector engagement, alongside growing global collaboration. It also shares insights from OpenSSF leadership and working groups on the challenges and opportunities ahead. Download the report to explore how the community is shaping a safer open source future.

PowSyBl

  • The PowSyBl community has completed its latest release train, with new versions released of PowSyBl Core and seven other repositories. Key new features include improved speed of AC calculations, introduction of an automatic resolution mechanism for incompatible voltage targets, and more.

RISE

  • The RISE Project is a collaborative project organized under the Linux Foundation EU, with the goal to provide engineering and financial resources for RISC-V software projects in order to create a robust and commercially viable ecosystem for RISC-V member orgs. In 2025, RISE has been working to enable the RISC-V software ecosystem in several key ways:
      • specific projects organized within 10 working groups
      • sponsoring of RFPs for paid contract work
      • sponsoring a Developer Appreciation Program to recognize smaller contributions
      • sponsoring a dedicated resource for embedded Linux support via Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded
      • sponsoring a dedicated build farm supporting RISC-V based software development
      • continued development of the RISC-V Software Optimization Guide
      • strong collaboration with RISC-V International and the RISC-V community
    • RISE continues to work diligently as well among the working groups, with projects ongoing around toolchain support, AI/ML, runtimes including Java, language support for Python and Rust, and of course the always-active Linux distro discussion group. RISE has also instituted a regular newsletter and has been present for major RISC-V events globally. If you would like to join our effort to bring corporate strength to RISC-V software, please get in touch with us at info@riseproject.dev or through our website.

Servo

  • The Servo project keeps making great progress in the last months, to the point that you can now make GitHub PRs using Servo itself. You can learn more details about new features in the last update on the Servo blog.
  • The project has defined sponsorship tiers for organizations and individuals donating money to the project, and we have got our first bronze sponsors. And we have now started to publish releases, this month we’ll release version 0.0.3.
  • Plans for next year look really promising, with work on many different areas: WebView API, WebDriver, performance, accessibility support, etc.
  • Some Servo contributors will be present at FOSDEM 2026 in Brussels by the end of January.

Zephyr Project

  • Recap of the Zephyr Project Meetup @ Mjølner Informatics (October 28, 2025)
    • The Zephyr Project Meetup at Mjølner Informatics took place on 28 October 2025 in Copenhagen at Microsoft’s Lyngby facilities, bringing together embedded developers, architects, and industry leaders. The program featured hands-on talks on rapid development with Zephyr, virtual-to-real workflows, CAN firmware, Bluetooth LE internals, and building embedded UIs. Speakers from Mjølner, Nordic Semiconductor, EBV Elektronik, Vestas, Qt, and Demant shared practical experiences from real projects. The event closed with a panel and open networking, highlighting how Zephyr supports flexible, vendor-agnostic embedded development. Read the recap blog.
  • Zephyr Project at Open Source Experience 2025
    • Open Source Experience 2025, held on 10–11 December in Paris, brought together over 4,000 professionals to explore open source innovation across AI, data, cloud, and cybersecurity. Representing the Zephyr Project, Benjamin Cabe delivered a talk on “Cyber Resilience Act Readiness for Embedded Product Makers,” focused on practical steps toward CRA compliance. He covered key areas such as SBOMs, vulnerability management, and security by design, showing how Zephyr’s practices align with the EU’s new requirements. The session offered clear, actionable guidance for embedded developers and product teams navigating the CRA.
  • Zephyr Project at FOSDEM 2026
    • The Zephyr Project will be at FOSDEM 2026 in Brussels, sharing a stand with the Dronecode Foundation. Visitors can expect live demos, products running on Zephyr, and the chance to meet project developers and maintainers. The team will also share insights on the Cyber Resilience Act, security best practices, and more. More details will follow as the event gets closer.

LF Education highlights

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Make the most of this offer and lock in your savings by 31 December 2025 as instructor-led course prices increase on 1 January 2026.

LF Europe Events: Mark your calendar!

Upcoming events:

To register for in-person attendance or virtual LF Europe events, please view our full calendar of events here, and be sure to subscribe to our events newsletter. Check out our Flickr stream for photos of past events!

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