The Linux Foundation Member Summit
A speaker onstage with a sign behind him that says "Build the next decade of infrastructure with us!"

Call For Proposals (CFP)

Overview

The Linux Foundation Member Summit is the annual gathering for Linux Foundation members that fosters collaboration, innovation, and partnerships among the leading projects and organizations working to drive digital transformation with open source technologies. It is a must-attend for business and technical leaders looking to advance open source strategy, implementation, and investment in their organizations and learn how to collaboratively manage the largest shared technology investment of our time.

submit a proposal

Please be aware that the Linux Foundation will now be utilizing Sessionize for CFP submissions. Sessionize is a cloud-based event content management software designed to be intuitive and user-friendly. If you need guidance, please review how to submit your session for an event to see step-by-step instructions and helpful screenshots.

dates to remember

  • CFP Closes: Monday, December 15 – 6:00 AM PST/ 9:00 AM EST (UTC -5)
  • CFP Notifications: Friday, January 16  
  • Schedule Announcement: Tuesday, January 20
  • Event Dates: Tuesday, February 24 – Wednesday, February 25

suggested topics

Leading and Scaling Open Source Projects

Focusing on how today’s open source leaders build healthy, resilient, and scalable ecosystems that can thrive in a complex global environment.

  • Governance and leadership transitions: evolving community structures
  • Balancing corporate and community priorities
  • Mentorship and contributor growth in hybrid/remote communities
  • Addressing burnout, motivation, and long-term contributor retention
  • Metrics and dashboards for measuring community health and sustainability
  • Documentation and communication best practices for scaling projects
  • Inclusion, culture, and the human side of community leadership
  • Managing project operations across global teams and time zones
The Modern OSPO: Governance, Risk & Impact

How Open Source Program Offices are evolving from compliance centers to strategic innovation and risk-management partners.

  • OSPO maturity models: from enablement to strategy
  • Integrating AI governance and model transparency into OSPO frameworks
  • Risk management: supply chain security, vulnerability disclosure, SBOM automation
  • Compliance modernization: SPDX, OpenChain, and AI-era toolchains
  • Policy awareness: CRA, AI Act, and global regulatory readiness
  • Measuring OSPO ROI and communicating business impact
  • OSPO collaboration across ecosystems, sectors, and governments
  • Building internal open source cultures and innersource adoption programs
Open Source + AI: Innovation, Transparency & Regulation

Where open collaboration meets the new frontier of artificial intelligence — governance, innovation, and responsible adoption.

  • Open foundation models, open data, and community-driven AI ecosystems
  • AI transparency, accountability, and licensing models
  • AI in developer tooling and open infrastructure (e.g., inference optimization, LLM ops)
  • AI + OSS supply chain security and model provenance
  • AI regulatory alignment: EU AI Act, US frameworks, and cross-region collaboration
  • Ethical AI practices and community norms for open AI projects
  • Collaborative models between open source foundations and AI alliances
  • Business strategies for integrating open AI responsibly
Sustainable Business Models & Ecosystem Growth

Exploring how companies, foundations, and projects build durable, ethical, and mutually beneficial open source ecosystems.

  • New monetization models: open core, dual licensing, managed services, and beyond
  • Open source investment, M&A, and startup ecosystem trends
  • Funding mechanisms for community-led innovation
  • Long-term sustainability for critical open infrastructure
  • Balancing profit motives with community ethics
  • Corporate engagement strategies that strengthen rather than control communities
  • Measuring ecosystem value and outcomes
  • Case studies: successful transitions from project to product or foundation
Trust, Security & Compliance in the Open Source Supply Chain

Reframed to highlight security as a shared business, technical, and reputational priority.

  • Building trust in global open source supply chains
  • Aligning security, OSPO, and engineering teams for proactive risk management
  • Incident response best practices and coordinated vulnerability disclosure
  • AI-driven approaches to detecting and mitigating risks
  • Transparency, provenance, and digital signing practices
  • Trusted distribution: integrating SBOMs into build and release pipelines
  • Compliance as a differentiator: automating assurance and certifications
  • Collaborating across sectors and borders to raise the bar on OSS security

submission types

  • Session Presentation (Typically 30-40 minutes in length)
  • Panel Discussion (typically 30-40 minutes in length)
  • Facilitated Discussion (This is not a presentation. The goal is to lead a group discussion based on the topic proposed.)

important notes

  • All speakers are required to adhere to our Code of Conduct. We also highly recommend that speakers take our online Inclusive Speaker Orientation Course.
  • Panel submissions must include the names of all participants in the initial submission to be considered. In addition, The Linux Foundation does not accept submissions with all-male panels in an effort to increase speaker diversity.
  • Complimentary Passes For Speakers – One complimentary pass for the event will be provided for the accepted speaker(s) per submission.
  • Avoid sales or marketing pitches and discussing unlicensed or potentially closed-source technologies when preparing your proposal; these talks are almost always rejected due to the fact that they take away from the integrity of our events, and are rarely well-received by conference attendees.
  • All accepted speakers are required to submit their slides prior to the event.

preparing to submit your proposal

While it is not our intention to provide you with strict instructions on how to prepare your proposal, we hope you will take a moment to review the following guidelines that we have put together to help you prepare the best submission possible. To get started, here are three things that you should consider before submitting your proposal:

  1. What are you hoping to get from your presentation?
  2. What do you expect the audience to gain from your presentation?
  3. How will your presentation help better the ecosystem?

There are plenty of ways to give a presentation about projects and technologies without focusing on company-specific efforts. Remember the things to consider that we mentioned above when writing your proposal and think of ways to make it interesting for attendees while still letting you share your experiences, educate the community about an issue, or generate interest in a project.

First Time Submitting? Don’t Feel Intimidated

Linux Foundation events are an excellent way to get to know the community and share your ideas and the work that you are doing and we strongly encourage first-time speakers to submit talks for our events. In the instance that you aren’t sure about your abstract, reach out to us and we will be more than happy to work with you on your proposal.

How to submit

First time using Sessionize?

Sessionize is a cloud-based event content management software designed to be intuitive and user-friendly. If you need guidance, please review how to submit your session for an event to see step-by-step instructions and helpful screenshots.

Submitting on behalf of somebody else?

While speakers ordinarily submit their sessions themselves, it’s also common for them to have someone else do it in their name. Submitters can choose to submit as someone else and must fill out the necessary speaker fields, but the session submission process is otherwise identical to when the session is submitted by the speaker themselves.

code of conduct

The Linux Foundation is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for participants at all of our events. We encourage all submitters to review our complete Code of Conduct.

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