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Taking Roads and Bridges literally

The article reflects on the author's experiences at UN Open Source Week 2026, literally interpreting the themes of roads and bridges as metaphors for digital infrastructure and open source collaboration at the United Nations.

Background

"Roads and Bridges" is a landmark 2015 report by the Ford Foundation and the Open Technology Institute that analyzed the funding crisis in open-source software (OSS) infrastructure — the "roads and bridges" of the digital world. It found that critical but invisible projects (e.g., OpenSSL, BIND) were maintained by volunteers or small teams with no sustainable funding, despite underpinning the entire internet economy. The metaphor became a rallying cry for philanthropic and government investment in OSS sustainability. UN Open Source Week (first held 2024, Geneva) is the United Nations' flagship event convening governments, foundations, and developers to discuss open-source software as a public good, digital sovereignty, and infrastructure resilience. The 2026 edition likely assessed progress since the report.

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