OpenUK’s second “State of Open Survey” #StateofOpen is live and runs until midnight BST on 12 June https://bit.ly/OpenUKStateofOpen2022.
State of Open was met with incredibly generous press and feedback in its inaugural 3 Phase form in 2021. “I can’t overstate the value of this report. It’s rare to find one that delves into the business value of open source and provides numbers to back it up. As an open source strategist, a resource like this is priceless to me,” commented VM (Vicky) Brasseur, Open Source Business Strategist and author of Forge your Future with Open Source.
Silona Bonewald Executive Director of IEEE SA OPEN, added “Oftentimes I need to explain to government officials and those in the public sector why Open Source is so important. OpenUK State of Open’s reports have been very valuable for bridging that gap. Even in countries that are very different from the UK people find they can relate to the report content. I have cited these OpenUK reports in so many slide decks – I have lost count.”
Thank you all for the support. The difficulty, of course, is working out the magic formula that made the Report a hit, retaining that, as well as allowing the work to evolve. A lot has happened in the year since our last survey and we particularly wanted to capture some of this.
Three events had a major impact: the Log4J security vulnerability, the first Open Technology for Sustainability event at COP26, and the UK Energy Sector Digitalisation Task Force Report calling for an open source software “Spine” for our energy sector and utilities. These affected OpenUK’s 2022 focus on Security, Skills and Sustainability as the grand challenges in open source software today in the UK.
Whilst the survey again captures UK adoption levels and data to facilitate an updated calculation of economic value, it also aligns to these challenges with a deep dive into the impacts and consequences of maturing open source software consumption, contribution and redistribution. This will help companies on the journey to open source maturity.
The 2022 State of Open will consider organisations’ journey to open source and the impacts and consequences of maturity of consumption, contribution and redistribution of open source software. This also feeds into OpenUK’s thinking on Public Sector and State Infrastructure built on open source.
Is it time for open source software to be classified as a digital public good for the UK and for the State to deal with the inevitable consequences of this? Or should it remain the responsibility of the community, with individual creators and companies shouldering the burdens of maintenance, management and security?
The White House’s work with OpenSSF leading to vast sums of money being invested in securing and maintaining open source software may be a tipping point whilst the rest of the world appears to look on. No viable solution to such challenges should ever come from any one country, and it is time to see coordinated thinking across Governments to manage the challenges.
Outputs of the survey will be used in the “State of Open : The UK in 2022” Report to be published in early July. This will be launched at face to face events across the four nations in the North of England, Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, but will also feed into the work OpenUK is doing to establish Societal Value Metrics for Open Technology. The results will feed into our second Open Technology for Sustainability event which will take place in October in Wales. We’ll issue a further report on this and share the analysis and thinking led by our Chief Sustainability Officer Cristian Parrino and our new Sustainability Advisory Board.
Security, funding and investment in open source software are top of both the Enterprise and State agenda.
“This Report will underline that there is work to be done to communicate the importance of open source software to the UK, and specifically to support organisations to create resilience across their supply chains” commented FlyingBinary’s Dr Jacqui Taylor, one of OpenUK’s Security Board Advisers. Another of these Control Plane’s Andrew Martin who is also OpenUK’s Chief Security Tech Officer added “This data gives OpenUK an insight into the prevalence of open source within the UK market, and supports our mission of ensuring the right incentives and outcomes for maintainers and end users in a safe and secure manner”.
Dr Jennifer Barth, founder, Smoothmedia and her team supported the innovative approach taken in State of Open 2021 and will again lead the survey analysis. You can also look forward to case studies and opinion pieces from key figures which were super popular in last year’s Report.
If you have a UK case study you would like to suggest, do get in touch.
And please, if you are based in the UK, take 20 minutes to complete the survey and if you are based elsewhere please share across your networks,
https://bit.ly/OpenUKStateofOpen2022
#StateofOpen
Amanda Brock,
CEO, OpenUK
