AI Policies, OSS Maintenance and EU Open Source Academy with Daniel Stenberg

episode 27: AI Policies, OSS Maintenance and EU Open Source Academy with Daniel Stenberg.

This episode features a deep and pragmatic conversation with Daniel Stenberg, founder of cURL and president of the European Open Source Academy, reflecting on FOSDEM 2026, the growing role of open source in European policy, and what digital sovereignty means in practice; Daniel shares the motivation behind the EU funded Open Source Academy, discusses how maintainers are dealing with the rise of AI generated security reports, explains why cURL shut down its bug bounty program, and offers a balanced view on where LLM tools genuinely help in code review and security research versus where they create noise, all while highlighting the long term realities of maintaining critical infrastructure software for decades.

Learn more:

• https://curl.se — cURL website
• https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/ — Daniel Stenberg blog
• https://fosdem.org — FOSDEM
• https://github.com/bagder/fosdem — FOSDEM tips repository
• https://europeanopensource.academy — European Open Source Academy
  

Rama

If you like this podcast you might also like our modular network framework in Rust: https://ramaproxy.org

Chapters

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:21 Navigating FOSDEM: Insights and Experiences
• 06:16 The Role of Open Source in Policy and Society
• 10:53 Polhemsrådet and European Open Source Aacademy
• 23:19 The Future of Bug Bounty Programs and AI's Role
• 32:35 Good use of LLM technologies in context of cURL
• 42:32 Daniel's personal LLM usage
• 47:28 how AI might evolve and impact cURL in future
• 53:08 The Future of AI in Software Development
• 56:02 Continuous Improvement in Curl
• 01:02:12 Mentorship and Community in Open Source
• 01:07:41 Very quick intro to some more obscure protocols supported by cURL
• 01:18:54 Outro
  

Netstack.FM

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Music for this episode was composed by Dj Mailbox. Listen to his music at https://on.soundcloud.com/4MRyPSNj8FZoVGpytj