Open Source Summit Europe 2025

he fear of "vibe coding" (non-developers using AI to write software) mirrors historical fears about DIY home improvement. Yet Home Depot built a trillion-dollar market by recognizing that proper tools, education, and boundaries enable regular people to tackle appropriate projects safely. This session shows how open sourcecommunities can lead the citizen development revolution by applying the same three-pillar approach that made DIY construction successful. I'll share real examples of where citizen development works, where it fails, and what we learned about building guardrails that actually work. You'll see how open source principles of visibility, community review, and shared knowledge create natural boundaries that keep people in their lane while unlocking massive productivity gains. Beyond just faster development, we found citizen developers actually help their IT teams get unstuck from endless backlogs and start shipping things that matter. Join me to see practical examples of how open sourcetools and governance models create a blueprint for democratizing software development without the disasters.