OSS + ELC EU 2026

Working in telco infrastructure means regulatory compliance isn't optional. When a CVE drops, we can't wait a quarter. We can't backport locally. We have to fix it upstream, and we have to do it fast. This constraint forced us to ask harder questions about how we collaborate with open source projects.

At Ericsson we maintain bare metal Kubernetes using Metal3, Cluster API, and Ironic. Over the past few years, we've learned that regulatory pressure actually makes us better engineers. It forced us to build real relationships with upstream maintainers, contribute more thoughtfully, and think long term instead of short term.

This talk explores what changed in how we work with upstream projects when we couldn't carry local patches. We'll talk about the specific practices that work when your infrastructure depends on fast, reliable upstream collaboration. You'll hear about what changed in how we communicate with maintainers, how we structure our releases, and what we learned about contributing upstream that applies whether you're bound by regulation or not.