Where standards and code meet

This year, we will support a pilot cohort of open source maintainers to participate in standards work at the IETF, W3C, and ISO, with compensation, onboarding, and mentoring to make sustained engagement possible. We are creating and piloting the Sovereign Tech Standards network: building the cohort of maintainers and providing the financial and structural support—and the partnerships—to make sustained participation possible. Standards and open source are not opposites, they reinforce each other: standards build trust and interoperability, while open source makes implementation easier, accelerates innovation, and feeds real-world experience back into the standardization process International standards are shaped by those with the institutional backing to participate consistently. This can make a big difference in the areas where open source is most relevant: web technologies, networking protocols, identity and authentication, cloud infrastructure, security, and AI systems. Many of the technologies that European digital infrastructure depends on are developed in open source projects. By combining the Sovereign Tech Agency's investment in open source maintainers with DIN's institutional standing in international standardization, we are working toward a model where open source implementation experience is a consistent presence in the processes that shape digital infrastructure, not an exception.