The Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) and UC OSPO Network members hosted the second annual UC Open Summit in Berkeley, April 22-23, 2026. Guided by the principles of being genuinely enjoyable, small but mighty, and warmly collaborative, the tone was set for this gathering of 150 open source enthusiasts, researchers, and educators from across the University of California system. The future of open science, scholarship, and sustainability was top of mind for all the participants, whether they were sharing their research, gathering insights from experts and peers, or planting seeds for new collaborations.
As part of her welcome address, Kirstie Whitaker, BIDS Executive Director, stated that one metric of success is simply witnessing people actively talking to each other. Fueled by a diverse set of open source presentation topics, she encouraged attendees to create connections that will continue to grow after the 2 days have concluded. The days were intentionally designed to foster conversations with audience participation as part of every session, long breaks for networking, and lightning introductions. Below are some of the highlights with links to the recordings.
Three keynotes with a shared message of participation beyond UC campuses
The summit featured three keynote speakers, each bringing expertise and a unique perspective from their open source work.
David Charron (UC Berkeley Haas School of Business) in his talk on “Open Software Entrepreneurship” looked at governance, sustainability, and how to obtain a deeper understanding of a project’s ecosystem. Charron sees a bright future with “enormous opportunities for everybody here… It's embodying understanding of how the world works into software and trying to improve how the world works over time. That data enables people who are using it and validating it along the way to move the world forward.” He described the benefits of applying some standard business practices to open source work through explorations of the makeup of the community, the value they create, and the impact they deliver – providing the attendees examples and questions for consideration as they continue their open source journeys. Watch David Charron’s full keynote talk.
Photo: (from left) David Charron, Nithya Ruff, and Kevin Esterling give keynote addresses to UC Open Summit attendees.
Nithya Ruff (Linux Foundation) explored “The Role of Foundations In Advancing Open Collaboration and Innovation”, discussing what open collaboration has built, what it can build next, and how universities can become more intentional participants in the foundations shaping the future of AI. Ruff shared her motivation and some encouragement: “there's no seat that's been reserved for academia… we need more academics – whether it's students, or professors, or PhDs – at the table of working groups or policy-making discussions that are happening today, because this is going to shape how the world is going to look like in the coming future.” She went on to describe open source work that originated at UC Berkeley and other UC’s which laid the groundwork for some massively popular and powerful tools used by industry today. By drawing this direct line from UC research to industry products, the case is easily made for researchers and academics to stay involved – this work belongs to all of us. Watch Nithya Ruff’s full keynote talk.
Kevin Esterling (University of California, Riverside) presented “Open Source AI and the Public Sphere: Two Paradoxes”. He talked about the open source movement and open source AI, and two paradoxes at their intersection. Giving this talk for the first time, he gave the attendees a unique opportunity to listen to his new ideas, encouraging their feedback and engagement about his assumption and the paradoxes. He set the stage by describing conscientious reasoning or deliberation, the seeking out of “diverse perspectives … in order to solve complex problems”. Esterling noted that “whether you are a motivated reasoner or a conscientious reasoner, it's just situational”. His presentation then turned to online platforms that use AI, which are designed to make democracy more robust, trying “to induce people to engage in conscientious reasoning.” Watch Kevin Esterling’s full keynote talk.
Panels answered timely questions with expert perspectives
The first panel “Understanding Open Source Pathways—A Review of NSF POSE Funded Projects across the UC System” served both as an introduction to POSE for those new to the process and as an opportunity for the panelists to share their experiences, giving all attendees a deeper understanding of how their project could benefit from this funding. Panel chair Amber Budden (UCSB) began by sharing an intriguing data point from POSE’s remarkable history: it has funded approximately 140 awards, a dozen of which have been awarded to the University of California system.
Jarrod Millman (BIDS) started the discussion by describing the unique benefit of POSE, that grants typically “had to do with novel features, new developments” and that open source projects’ needs are greater than that. They are “more about community and governance and building collaborations than it is about the specific code. And there has to be code, but without the community governance and other aspects of it, it's hard to get new maintainers on board.” Other panel members Harikrishna Kuttivelil (UCSC), Andrew Kahng (UCSD), Stephanie Lieggi (UCSC), and Sanjit Seshia (UC Berkeley) shared their perspectives, including the challenges and opportunities of transitioning from academic project to open source community-facing endeavor. Real-world examples like these are key to imagining how open source projects can flourish. Watch the POSE panel.
Photo: Leilani Gilpin chairs the panel “Influence of AI on Open Source and Open Scholarship” with Fernando Pérez, Marit MacArthur, Sahiba Chopra, and Tara Hernandez.
Later that day, Karla Padilla (UCSD) chaired “Making a COSS Play” with Heather Meeker (Chinstrap Community), Mike Cohen (UC Berkeley), Dirk Riehle (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg), and Joel Kehle (UCLA). For those interested in commercial open source software (COSS), this advice from experts in software licensing, leading startups, product strategy, and tech transfer in academia provided a clear path to implementation. Two key recommendations: Review UCOP’s Open Source Software (OSS) Resources and reach out to a UC tech transfer office (UC’s technology commercialization system), a network of ten university campuses which operate under a common policy framework and share resources. Watch the “Making a COSS Play” panel.
The last panel at the summit “Influence of AI on Open Source and Open Scholarship”, chaired by Leilani Gilpin (UCSC), examined AI’s impact on open source from three angles. First, the empirical evidence on how AI-assisted contributions are being evaluated by maintainers; second, the practical challenges facing UC researchers trying to use AI tools in reproducible, open scholarship, the infrastructure questions that determine whether open source AI is even a viable option; and third what decades of community building can tell us about where we go from here.
Panelists Fernando Pérez (UC Berkeley, BIDS), Sahiba Chopra (UC Berkeley), Marit MacArthur (UC Davis), and Tara Hernandez (MongoDB/UCSC) brought varied – and sometimes unexpected – perspectives to this topic, shaped by experiences as a poetry scholar, an open source pioneer, a PhD student thinking about AI in the open source context, and an engineering leader who works on the mechanics of open source. Pérez offered a sensible way to approach AI in open source work: “What I hope we can do is build practices and policies – and be creative and experiment, and understand that we will make mistakes…” The panellists agreed: adoption will be smooth if academic and open source communities bring curiosity and a willingness to accept that some tasks will be different in the age of generative AI. Most importantly, we should collectively ensure that AI is helpful in ways that do not harm our teams and communities. Watch the AI panel.
Breakout sessions illustrated the depth and variety of work in the open source community
During the six breakout sessions, 25 presenters discussed their open source research and tools followed by facilitated Q&A sessions. An important element of these sessions is literally giving the stage to researchers who want to reach an audience beyond that of their campus community, exposure that increases the opportunities for collaboration and knowledge-sharing. The list is too extensive to share here – you are encouraged to read about each presenter linked from the schedule and watch the sessions!
- Watch "Open Practices for Education and Training"
- Watch "Open Source Tools for Scientific Research"
- Watch "Enabling Impact Across California"
- Watch "Building Open Source and Open Science Ecosystems"
- Watch "Open Source Tools for Public Benefit"
- Watch "Open Infrastructure for Collaborative Research"
Reflecting on the increased adoption of open source tools across the UC system and the impact they enable, Stephanie Lieggi, Executive Director for Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS) at UC Santa Cruz, remarked: “It was gratifying to see how the UC Open Summit grew and matured from year one to year two. I appreciate how the conversation has moved beyond making the case for open source in academia and into a deeper understanding of open source as central to the university's mission and its impact on our broader communities. This year demonstrated how open source in a university setting can be a powerful platform for sharing lessons learned, building on each other's work, and asking hard questions about how new technologies shape our research infrastructure. Through our network and this event, UC has a unique opportunity to show what sustainable open source looks like in a public university — and how it can positively impact society. As always, California is well-positioned to lead the way.”
Photo: Seven speakers from the breakout sessions present their research to UC Open Summit attendees.
Wrapping up these two days of impressive work and fruitful discussions, giving everyone the feeling of belonging and purpose, Kirstie Whitaker disclosed that the reason that she does this work “is because I genuinely believe that the work that we are collectively doing is part of a thriving democratic process and civic engagement." The UC OSPO Network will continue providing opportunities to engage and share in this democratic process during monthly meetups and at this annual event. To stay in touch and join the conversation, sign up for the UC Berkeley OSPO list by emailing ospo+subscribe@lists.berkeley.edu, follow us on Bluesky & LinkedIn, and subscribe to the BIDS newsletter.