Today OpenUK is sharing our first public update on the work we have been commissioned to undertake by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). This was procured through a competitive tendering process, and delivered to UKRI earlier this year, sitting under the concept of “sustainable software development”.
Inevitably this focuses on open source and digital public good to enable software sustainability. OpenUK provided UKRI with two suites of recommendations based on:
- The UK’s public sector role as a user of open source; and
- Its role as a funder of open source software.
At this stage we want to give the world a heads up on the work done so far, why it is important and what we are working on now.
First off, a little history. In 2011, under the Cabinet Office and Francis Maude’s leadership, we saw the world’s first open-source-first policy for a public sector organisation. The policy aligned with the set up of Government Digital Services (GDS), led by Mike Bracken. Based on that policy and the work that the team at GDS carried out, this approach became an exemplar of how to adopt digital services for public service. I have been in this space long enough that I was on the Cabinet Office Advisory Board which supported the creation and release of this policy along with colleagues like Simon Wardley and Andrew Katz, who are also still around today.
To put this in context, we have seen a shift in software to a digital world and in particular around open source. From days when open source software licenses were rank outsiders in the world of software, infrastructure, and enterprise, perceived as being created and used only by the “mythical developer in a basement,” to a world today where over 70% of the software in the commercial stack is open source and more than 90% of all software in those stacks has open source dependencies. Today, open source is created by individuals, by communities, by academics, through corporate collaboration in a state of co-opetition and through public sector funding. The public cloud and platforms are built on open source software. Enterprises, academia and the public sector have shifted to it at scale.
But what does that adoption of open source at scale across our infrastructure mean and how can it be made “sustainable?” Surely, there is enough support for open source already?
Whilst open source may have won an adoption race as the world has digitalised, the pace of open source adoption has not been matched by a similar increase in understanding around what open source is or the funding to support that software being created and maintained.
The world is rife with misinformation about open source. This enables the opportunists who wish to take advantage of that confusion and lack of understanding to “open wash” their products. They can take the value of open source without paying the price of true open source when in return for the scale of adoption, best collaborative innovation and support of contributing communities, anyone sharing open source in a commercial context enables their competitors with their innovation.
Monetising open source software distributed on an Open Source Definition-compliant licence is the holy grail of open source in business. Open source is not of itself a business model, unlike the royalty model of proprietary software. Instead, companies involved in open source provide services and support for a project, or they might sell a cloud service that runs that open source software.
Whilst the open source community fought a hard battle for this adoption, there is today an insurmountable pressure on the open source ecosystem. Our one-to-many expertise, assumes that because code is gifted by its creators, it will be accompanied by free services and that contribution back is not required under the licences, have left the open source ecosystem under pressure and under funded. We are not well represented in conversations that make decisions about our deliverables and our future.
What is the role for Government in open source?
If open source is to have a future, then we need change. We need change on a broad scale across the public sector, and not just in terms of funding. Only by taking this broad and holistic approach to securing the future of open source will we see the future of sustainable software development using open source secured.
In Europe, the German Sovereign Tech Fund has evolved into a Sovereign Tech agency. Across Europe, calls for an EU sovereign tech fund that can support local software providers grow louder too. While these calls have merit, this can only create a significant but relatively small potential fund to support open source in practice. It will not solve the challenges of the overall market. Similarly, policies and laws will not solve the challenges either.
The UK has remained quiet. In the background we have been working hard, looking at the future and considering what it would take to evolve this country’s support of open source across the landscape of use and contribution in a meaningful way. This would mean building the necessary tools and infrastructure to enable our national ecosystem and a future facing environment.
We must also look to sovereignty, in this world of digital politics and geopolitical shift. As explained in the UK’s Compute Roadmap, the UK approach is an internationally collaborative one. Rather than looking at sovereignty as a way to protect internal markets, sovereignty should be viewed as a way to support more collaboration and deliver the best services possible. That is not only at the heart of UK sovereignty but also fundamental to the principles of open source. It will not be achieved by a “built here” mentality but by enabling future growth and success in our local geography whilst collaborating globally.
To deliver the long term sustainability that open source needs is a massive task. Maintainers for those software projects need to be paid, and community development and its ecosystem needs funding over time. The challenge needs to be met by a mix of public and private funding that covers the need for innovation and the long-term support for projects together. This funding approach should recognise a return for the value generated by open source for the world and its citizens.
What are we recommending?
OpenUK has delivered a suite of recommendations to UKRI for the UK. A fund (akin to the sovereign tech fund) is a small part of one of those recommendations.
In terms of that funding it must be enabled by a co-related reduction in innovation funding to cover the long term overhead of maintenance of that software, of open source and ecosystem funding. It is of course essential that the public sector contributes back to the community around the value that open source brings, and supports both maintenance and the ecosystem necessary for open source whether in software or AI to flourish and thrive.
Individuals and organisations securing funding will not alone enable open source success. There needs to be a massive shift across the landscape of software and its sustainability. No country in the world is doing open source well today and more than funding is essential to success.
How code is managed, its curation, building skills and understanding, ensuring interoperability and mechanisms to achieve all of this are a significant part of that work required and sit under the actions OpenUK has recommended. They must also be forward-looking and embrace AI innovation in this AI dominated world.
To support this, we need more training for procurement officers to assess funding applications. We have to change the definition of open source in procurement to be more than the currently accurate technical definition requiring sharing the source on a public repository using an OSD compliant licence to ensure that publicly funded code is open and used, that documentation is written, contributors supported, and community development takes place to share the efforts of that work more widely. Without curation, this code will not be adopted let alone at scale and will end up being part of a GitHub wilderness.
No country in the world today has the structures and practical requirements in place to enable this and the actions required to make this work across the public sector form the basis of our recommendations.
None of this will be achieved with a policy or a law on open source, well intentioned as those calling for such things may be.
What’s coming up
The UK is well recognised as a world leader in open source software. The country hosts Europe’s largest open source developer community supported by a large ecosystem of experts. We have some of the world’s leaders in open source success, from governance to community building and foundation management. We demonstrated that open source contributed 27% to the UK’s Digital Gross Value Added in 2022. Often referred to as the “submarine under the UK digital economy” this global collaborative community is at the cornerstone of global software sustainability and AI openness.
Today, as our digital leaders in the public sector build today’s equivalent of GDS, it’s time to leverage that incredible opportunity. Using the UK’s unique mix of people, skills and technology impact, we can build the model for successful sustainable software through a modern and holistic approach to open source.
We will not get everything needed to build this new landscape right the first time. We will fail and start again and learn as we grow. The UK sits at a moment in time, as it did in 2010, where we have the opportunity to lead the world and to share our outputs in a way that will enable others to join us and build global collaboration.
Amanda Brock, CEO, OpenUK
“UKRI recognises its dual role as both a funder and user of open software and is committed to strengthening the sustainability of the open software ecosystem that underpins Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI). OpenUK’s recommendations highlight exciting opportunities for the UK to lead globally in supporting the development and maintenance of open source software by building on national strengths and international best practice to drive innovation and impact.”
Richard Gunn, Programme Director, UKRI
“The world has learned that open source software can’t be sustained on goodwill alone, but it also can’t be fixed by money alone. What’s needed is a balance: investment in people, process and the long-term maintenance that enables innovation both inside and built on top of open source software. ”
Mike McQuaid, Open Source Maintainer, HomeBrew
“UK-based engineers play an outsize role contributing to open source projects and communities. Open Source has enabled careers like mine, taking leadership roles at a global level and working on international projects, while being based in the UK ”
Liz Rice, Chief Open Source Officer, Isovalent at Cisco
“Technology transfer between cutting edge research and public adoption has been dramatically sped up in the past three decades by open source. The rise of cloud computing, large-scale data science and formal verification can all be traced back to code first written in research organisations. We need this innovation loop more than ever now, to keep pace with advances in artificial intelligence and ensure societal impacts resulting from these are equitable and just.”
Anil Madhavapeddy, Professor of Planetary Computing, Cambridge
The UK has all the raw materials it needs to be a leader in building, and scaling open source businesses. We have the engineering talent, entrepreneurial creativity, and global position. However, we’ve not quite figured out how to unlock this potential. The recommendations in this report will help us to do that.
Matt Barker, Founder JetStack, VP, CyberArk
“Open Source is the foundation of our digital world and our digital economy in the UK, and we ignore it at our peril. The challenges of scale and of security mean that governments, more than ever, have an opportunity to shape our future, and catalyse sustainable good practice at a global level.”
Rebecca Rumbul, Executive Director and CEO, Rust Foundation
