Lukas Kahwe Smith
Lukas Kahwe Smith joined in the open source scene in 2000. He became release manager for PHP 5.3. In this role he established the PHP RFC process. As part of the core team in the PHP project Symfony, he initiated the Symfony Diversity initiative. After leaving the web agency Liip, he co-founded Witty Works, a startup offering a writing assistance for inclusive language. Since May 2025 he is working at the Bern University of Applied Sciences on the public procurement platform intelliprocure.ch and the Zentrum SDS initiative.
Sessions
There is a massive potential for public procurement to play a key role in open-source funding. Governments want software that is secure, maintainable, and backed by visible ecosystems as they look for digital sovereignty. But the reality is that proprietary procurement remains the safe play for procurement offices. This session shows how interoperable metadata formats could turn procurement requirements into a funding lever by making adoption, security posture, and contribution capacity legible across catalogs and jurisdictions.