India’s ascendancy in global open source
India has taken the lead in open source contribution growth, overtaking the United States in both new contributors and total contributions. It’s not a temporary surge. It’s a marked shift in global innovation balance. The data, shared publicly at the Civo Navigate India keynote, shows that the ecosystem isn’t just growing, it’s scaling differently. Faster, broader, and with a kind of grassroots energy we’re not seeing elsewhere right now.
If contributor growth in India continues at the current rate, the country is on track to become the global leader in open source contributor count by 2030. The volume is impressive, sure, but the quality dimension matters more. Indian developers are not just pushing code into repositories, they’re participating in the global architecture of AI, infrastructure, and platform development. That’s how you change where the center of gravity sits in tech.
What this means for the rest of us, especially those operating globally, is that open source doesn’t have one headquarters anymore. Innovation is distributed. So if you’re building digital infrastructure, running AI platforms, or setting technical strategy, India isn’t just a market. It’s fast becoming one of the key nodes in global innovation.
The disparity between open source success and understanding
Open source software is everywhere now. It runs your infrastructure, your cloud platforms, your AI stacks, even when you’re not thinking about it. But here’s the problem: the people building it, especially new contributors, often don’t know how it actually works at a foundational level. They know how to use the platforms. They don’t always understand the rules that govern them.
Licensing is a major weak point. Open source isn’t just “free software.” It comes with responsibilities. Licenses ensure that the software can be used, modified, and shared, by anyone, for any purpose. This is the core idea that has enabled open source to fuel innovation across the board. But if contributors aren’t tracking which license a project is under, and what that actually means, you’re setting up conflicts. Best case: someone has to rework the code. Worst case: legal exposure.
This knowledge gap is growing for one reason, we’re now deep into the second generation of open source contributors. Many of them are drawn in by the speed of innovation and collaborative methodology. That’s good. But the social contract that made open source scalable, that’s what’s getting ignored. And once that gets diluted, everything gets slower. Less trust, more fragmentation.
For executives, the takeaway is straightforward. If you’re betting on open source for your stack, especially in AI, you need technical leadership that understands the licenses, not just the tech. You want to move fast, not invite unnecessary constraints. So yes, support open source, but do it with eyes wide open.
Authentic open source AI requires adherence to fundamental principles
Most people calling their AI software “open source” don’t really mean it. Real open source requires that anyone, your competitors, your partners, your future self, can use the code for any intended purpose, without seeking permission. That’s what created the global innovation engine we’re standing on right now. AI shouldn’t be an exception.
As AI scales into foundation models, infrastructure systems, and national strategies, it’s important to get this right. If you’re using contractual constraints or restricting users under the label of openness, then it isn’t open source, it’s just software with fewer restrictions. And if that’s the model you’re adopting, fine, but don’t call it open source.
Open source in AI needs to mean full access: to codebases, training data, model weights, and deployment tooling. Without this transparency, you lose the compounding effect of global iteration. You get slower progress, duplication of effort, and fragmentation. And the real value, large-scale, decentralized innovation, gets left behind.
For decision-makers and executives, this isn’t just a terminology issue. It affects product strategy, alliances, acquisition risk, and talent retention. Developers deeply prefer working on projects that are open in the true sense. If you’re not clear on your licensing and governance, you’re going to miss out on the best ideas this space can offer.
Open source as the cornerstone of digital sovereignty
Sovereignty in the digital era means control, control over the tech that runs your core systems, from national infrastructure to AI-driven services. To get that control reliably, you can’t be locked in to a vendor or dependent on another country’s regulatory environment. Open source is the only method we have right now that guarantees long-term access, modification rights, and independence from foreign commercial or political influence.
Whether we look at China’s DeepSeek using publicly available U.S. model architectures to build R1, or Europe’s conflicting moves to promote digital sovereignty while bureaucratically slowing down tech adoption, there’s a clear theme. Countries want independence. But independence that doesn’t scale just burns resources.
Open source gives nations and companies the tools to build what they need, based on whatever values, security, culture, privacy, they choose. And it does this while keeping the door open to contribute back to shared global systems. If you cut off global input, yes, you insulate for control, but you lose the pace of advancement that open source made possible in the first place.
What business leaders need to understand is that sovereign tech built on open source isn’t a compromise. It’s a reinvestment in resilience. You’re taking powerful global infrastructure and making sure it’s usable on your terms, without giving up future compatibility, scalability, or innovation. That’s what makes these systems viable for the long term.
Risks of isolated, localized open source ecosystems
It’s easy to mistake local control for strategic independence. Some governments and tech leaders are pushing to create “local source” ecosystems, domestically developed versions of open source tools, stripped of global dependencies. It might look like a useful path to digital sovereignty, but long term, it doesn’t work.
Fragmenting from the global open source community forces every nation or company to replicate the development, maintenance, and innovation cycles that are otherwise shared across borders. Most entities won’t have the engineering power or financial runway to sustain that. You may see local wins, short-term contracts, or government grants, but that’s not innovation. It’s protectionism.
The strength of open source comes from scale, shared knowledge, improvements from contributors around the world, and the continuous cycle of versioning and fixes. When you disconnect from that, the codebase doesn’t age well. Technical debt increases. Update cycles slow down. Security suffers.
For executives, this should be a clear strategic filter: if a company or national body proposes a “go-it-alone” open source model, question the long-term performance. Ask how it plans to match the velocity of a global contributor base. If it can’t, it’s not a scalable solution. You don’t gain sovereignty by isolating. You gain it by using systems that remain open and competitive against any counterpart.
Local adaptation of global innovations as a model for sovereignty
Real sovereignty in digital technology doesn’t mean isolation. It means shaping global tools to serve local needs, with access to source code, data models, and customization options that align with national priorities. This includes language, policy frameworks, cultural inputs, and security standards. That’s where open source is essential. It provides the baseline to localize effectively without redeveloping everything from scratch.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, referred to this broader national capability as “national intelligence”—the integration of AI and infrastructure in ways that reflect a country’s identity. That doesn’t mean excluding global tech. It means starting with the best global tools and making them relevant to your local context.
This approach avoids the pitfalls of siloed development. It protects access without giving up innovation speed. It also ensures your engineers stay aligned with where the most advanced problem-solving is happening worldwide. Sovereignty isn’t binary. It’s shaped by who builds, adapts, and scales tech with context and precision.
If you’re leading strategy in government or enterprise, focus your teams on interoperability with global systems, but push them to optimize for your country’s or company’s needs. That’s where resilience comes from, not from closing off, but from investing in adaptation that’s fast, functional, and future-proof.
Promoting open source as a global digital public good
Open source isn’t just a development model, it’s infrastructure for global progress. When the code is open, accessible, and unrestricted by region or license traps, it becomes a foundational asset for any country or business building future-facing systems. Whether you’re deploying AI, upgrading digital services, or supporting national-scale infrastructure, open source gives you direct access to tools that work, and the permission to improve them.
At the Global AI Impact Summit, the framework of “People, Planet, and Power” was introduced to highlight how AI and tech should align with societal goals. Open source supports that vision. It democratizes access to innovation, lowers barriers to entry, and encourages science, business, and policy to move forward together. It’s one of the clearest examples of a Digital Public Good, an asset that benefits everyone and that anyone can help evolve.
Governments need to protect that public nature. When regulation is built to favor closed ecosystems or local monopolies, the long-term promise of using open source to achieve sustainable, inclusive innovation is compromised. Short-term gains for a few companies shouldn’t come at the cost of nationwide or sector-wide technological growth.
For business leaders, this is about clarity of direction. If you’re investing in AI, infrastructure, or national platforms, prioritize solutions that can scale globally with open collaboration. Build with the understanding that long-term control, market flexibility, and technological relevance are amplified, not weakened, when the systems you depend on are shared across boundaries and backed by global contributors. Success doesn’t come from gatekeeping. It comes from making the best ideas available to everyone, and building fast on top of them.
Final thoughts
Open source isn’t just code, it’s strategy. If you’re leading a company, a country, or a core system, the real question isn’t whether to use open source. That’s already decided. The question is how you engage with it: as a passive consumer, or as an active participant shaping your own future.
Sovereignty, innovation, and long-term control don’t require cutting ties with global systems. They require understanding how to use those systems to your advantage. When you build on open platforms, with clear licensing, responsible governance, and global collaboration, you get scale, adaptability, and resilience.
Going it alone might feel like control. But control without reach, speed, or relevance quickly turns into limitation. The game is changing fast. The players that win will be the ones who can move faster on shared platforms while adapting them precisely for their needs.
This is the time to double down on global open source, not just as a tool, but as infrastructure for your roadmap. The future isn’t just built. It’s built together.
