Securing the code that animates the world
Æva Black has spent more than twenty-five years building digital infrastructure and open source communities and, more recently, shaping how governments and industry think about the security and sustainability of the software we all depend on.
A career at the crossroads of open source and security
Black wrote their first public code in 1999, working on peer-to-peer network applications. Since then, they have founded and led open source projects ranging from cloud infrastructure – OpenStack Ironic (“Bare Metal”) – to software supply chain security – OmniBOR – and served across the governance bodies of the ecosystem: the OpenStack Technical Committee, the OpenSSF Technical Advisory Council, the Kubernetes Code of Conduct Committee, and the board of the Open Source Initiative.
After leading open source security strategy in the Microsoft Azure Office of the CTO, Black joined the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) as Section Chief for Open Source Software Security, helping a national cybersecurity agency learn to work with open source communities rather than around them. In 2025, they founded Null Point Studio, a boutique cybersecurity consultancy based in the Netherlands, to keep supporting the sustainability and security of free and open source software, this time from within the community.
A familiar figure on conference stages since 2005, most recently on a FOSDEM panel and in a FOSS Backstage keynote asking whether open source can be secure by design, Black brings to the ambassador program a rare combination of deep technical roots, public policy experience on both sides of the Atlantic, and a talent for explaining why all of this matters.
Why Software Heritage, and why now
Black traces their decision to join the program to a remark made by Roberto Di Cosmo earlier this year: over the past decade, the work of Software Heritage has helped UNESCO recognize software source code as part of humanity’s cultural heritage – something genuinely valuable, something that has changed the world.
For Black, that recognition arrives at a critical moment. We are living through an inflection point in how software gets made: AI is transforming who writes code and how, and the legacy of the last thirty years of programming by hand – the code that carries the knowledge, the craft, and the history of our field – has never been more important to preserve.
Security, sustainability, and AI are not separate conversations: they all converge on the question of digital sovereignty. And sovereignty, as they put it, is the ability to study, modify, and distribute the code that animates the world around us. That ability depends on the code being there, findable, verifiable, and preserved for the long term. That is exactly what the Software Heritage archive provides, and it is why Black believes now is a critical time to support it.
Bridging security, policy, and preservation
As an ambassador, Æva Black will help connect Software Heritage with the cybersecurity and open source policy communities they know so well, from security practitioners who need verifiable references to source code, to policymakers working on the sustainability of the open source commons.
Software Heritage Ambassadors are volunteers who offer expert advice in various sectors and languages on how to use our services. Here’s more information on how to book one for a free consultation.
If you’d like to connect with Æva Black, please reach out using this link: https://aeva.online/
We’re also seeking passionate individuals and organizations to volunteer as ambassadors and help grow the Software Heritage community. If you’re interested in becoming an Ambassador, please share a bit about yourself and your connection to the Software Heritage mission.