State of Open: The UK in 2022 — Phase One: “The Open Source Journey” Report
Released on 7 July 2022
Following the journey to open source maturity — from consumption, to contribution, to distribution of products and services built on open source software — this report tells the story of that lifecycle across UK enterprise and the public sector. Blending the State of Open Survey 2022 with case studies from the BBC, Skyscanner, Nationwide, New Look, OVO, the Scottish Government and more, it shows the practical impact of open source on daily life in the UK, and looks ahead to infrastructure, curation, security and sustainability.
Report Includes:
Foreword, Introduction and Conclusion
- Foreword, Sarah Murphy MS, Welsh Parliament
- Introduction, Amanda Brock, CEO, OpenUK
- Conclusion, Dr Jennifer Barth
Thought Leadership
- How Much Value Does Open Source Provide, Exactly?
- The Value of Open Source in 2022, Bruce Perens, one of the founders of the Open Source Software Movement
- GDS and Our Public Sector, James Stewart, Partner, Public Digital
- Open Source and Standards, Simon Phipps, Director of Standards, Open Source Initiative
- Security, Andrew Martin, Founder and CEO, ControlPlane and CISO, OpenUK
- Curation: The Path to Trustworthy Open Source, Eric Brewer, Google Fellow, Google
- Societal Value Metrics for Open Technology, Cristian Parrino, Chief Sustainability Officer, OpenUK
Case Studies
- Dumfries and Galloway Council, James Parker and Michael von Euw (Scottish Tech Army)
- The Scottish Government, Gyda Carmichael and Thomas Williamson
- BBC Research and Development, Phil Tudor and Rob Cooper
- BBC Standards, Judy Parnall, Head of Standards and Industry, BBC R&D
- Skyscanner, Christian Martorella, CISO
- Nationwide Building Society, Seiji Okamoto, Cloud Platform Engineer
- New Look, Ed Alford, CTO
- OVO, Simon Goldsmith, Director of Information Security
Survey and Data
- The State of Open Survey 2022: consumption, contribution, distribution, IP, recruitment, collaboration and security, with comparison against 2021
- Economic update, including new methodologies to value open source software
- Security: SBOMs and SPDX, the OpenSSF and White House response
Key findings:
Executive Summary
The Open Source Journey traces UK organisations’ path to open source maturity — consumption, contribution, then distribution — through the 2022 survey, case studies and thought leadership.
The journey to maturity
- The report structures the UK’s open source story by lifecycle phase rather than format, cross-referencing 2022 survey results against real journeys from the BBC to Nationwide
- Some organisations consume and distribute but do not contribute — the maintainer challenge sits at the heart of sustainability
Open source in daily UK life
- From Springwatch’s wildlife cameras to travel, fashion, finance and energy, open source underlies daily activities across enterprise and the public sector
- Public sector case studies (Scottish Government, Dumfries and Galloway) show what an open-first public sector can look like; Sarah Murphy MS makes the case for Wales to lead in open source
Security moves centre stage
- Post Log4Shell, the report examines security response: Software Bills of Materials and SPDX, the OpenSSF and the White House engagement
- Andrew Martin and Eric Brewer set out the path to trustworthy, curated open source
Value and the future
- An economic update compares 2022 with 2021 and explores new methodologies for valuing open source, with Bruce Perens on the value of open source in 2022
- Cristian Parrino introduces societal value metrics for open technology — an early sustainability lens
State of Open: The UK in 2022 – Report Launch Videos
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