The UK organisation for the business of Open Technology

OpenUK Provides Recommendations for the UK Foundation of Open Source

• Need for UK-based Foundation for open source innovation, community and collaboration
• Support for creators, maintainers and community around open source innovation
• Public private model proposed for UK National Foundation for open source

London, UK  –  6th March 2026 – OpenUK, the non-profit organisation convening the UK’s Open Technology sector, and its international sister OpenHQ, announce the detail of the organisation’s work for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) around the UK’s open source software sector as they move to second phase where they will scope out the foundation. The recommendations provided to UKR cover how the UK can support better open source from the UK with collaboration and community development through a new National Foundation for open source projects from the UK. It will support the UK public and private sectors as funders and users of open source, enabling them to build internationally collaborative, resilient and sustainable infrastructure from the UK. 

The recommendations include funding innovation through a new home for UK public sector open source innovation projects. 

A new National open source foundation would:

• Act as steward for open source projects developed using UK investment
• Providing them with a sustainable and long term engagement strategy for community development, contribution and global collaboration.
• Support governance and regulation for projects, as well as building user community engagement, providing training and engaging with the global open source community to encourage collaboration, to ensure longevity and collaboration.
• Engage with funding partners and philanthropic organisations as well as the UK public sector to support the open source ecosystem and maintenance of projects.
• Work in parallel with an Open Source Incubator/ Accelerator to build and scale businesses and the collaborative ecosystem around open source projects
• Manage UK contributions to global open source projects and international collaboration 
• Supporting innovation around open source across the UK public sector
• Not a national open source programme office but incorporating the functions into a bigger forward looking organisation

The work will support procurement best practices for open source innovation to enable organisations to re-use innovation, to build iteratively on this and to  collaborate on projects rather than reinventing them. This will enable long term and collaborative management and maintenance for open source projects, including work on how to manage and incentivise those that work as maintainers

The National Foundation model will be fleshed out in the coming weeks by OpenUK with international and UK expert collaboration and will investigate public-private partnerships for co-development where appropriate.

By establishing an organisation to house UK open source innovation the UK can follow open source best practices around curation, collaboration and community development. This will enable the public sector to deliver its goals. Importantly, this focus on practical delivery around projects and maintenance will put the emphasis on how to achieve results and deliver efficiency and growth. 

The project will finally deliver the engine to power this policy and can be the how in making the UK the“home of open source AI”, as championed by the UK AI Minister Kanishka Narayan MP. He emphasised his support for open source AI and OpenUK in a video at the recent AI Impact Summit in India. 

Amanda Brock, CEO at OpenUK, commented: “The next phase of our work builds on last year’s recommendations to UKRI, which are now public for the first time. We will provide a blueprint for how the UK manages the outputs of its spend on innovation to enable sustainable infrastructure that’s open. 

This will enable the UK to deliver better results through taking an open-source-first-approach that delivers and scales. With IP held in a National organisation as the foundation for open source expertise to projects and a solid base for our global collaboration. 

This will be a leading structure to align with our almost 15 year old, world-leading public sector open source policy. The spirit of open source innovation is about delivering tangible results through tools, rather than looking at policy and reports alone.”

Supporting Quote:

“UKRI continues to support the open technology ecosystem that exists in the UK as part of an international community and collaboration effort that is critical for enabling our researchers and innovators. With so much of our digital research infrastructure today dependent on open source, delivering a sustainable framework for open source investment will support the country’s researchers, technology companies and public sector organisations.” Richard Gunn, Programme Director, UKRI

About OpenUK and OpenHQ

OpenUK is the organisation for the business of Open Technology, being Open Source Software, Open Source Hardware, Open Data, Open Standards and AI Openness across the UK. Its purpose is UK leadership and global collaboration in Open Technology. OpenUK works on three pillars: Community, Legal and Policy and Learning.  In 2025 OpenUK focused on AI and openness and soft launched its sister organisation OpenHQ to focus on coalescing international communities such as that in India for international policy initiatives. 

OpenUK is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee, company number 11209475.
Twitter: @openuk_uk

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Website: openuk.uk and theopenhq.com/ 

Contact:

onebite for OpenUK – openuk@onebite.co.uk