This blog was first published on Nov 26, 2025 at https://blog.irvingwb.com/blog/2025/11/the-state-of-open-source-software-in-2025.html and repurposed here with consent from the author. 

Open source and open collaboration communities face ongoing threats from “non-practicing entities” (NPEs, also sometimes called “patent trolls”). The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has proposed new procedural rule changes that would benefit NPEs, by making it harder to defend against NPEs who assert weak patents. 

Artificial intelligence is reshaping economic systems at a pace we have rarely seen in modern technological history. Every sector—from finance to healthcare to manufacturing—is scrambling to understand how to harness AI safely, efficiently, and competitively. Yet amid the excitement, a crucial part of the story has been missing. Specifically, understanding the role that open models play in the AI economy, and how much value is being left on the table when organizations overlook open alternatives, are two topics requiring a closer look.

Welcome to the November 2025 edition of the Linux Foundation Newsletter.

As we move toward year‑end, open source activity at the Linux Foundation (LF) remains at full throttle. In the past month, we welcomed major new projects, strengthened our AI‑and‑infrastructure portfolio, and reinforced our global collaboration model across security, research, and innovation. A huge thank you to all contributors, maintainers, members and staff who keep this momentum going!

Here are more of this month’s highlights:

• Valkey 9.0 Delivers Next‑Gen Performance at Scale
  The open‑source key‑value database project announced version 9.0 this month. This release introduces atomic slot migration, multiple databases in cluster mode, hash‑field expiration, and benchmarks showing support for over 1 billion requests per second across 2,000 nodes. 
  
  • Read more about the latest version of Valkey in Diginomica
• Fluxnova Launches Under FINOS to Orchestrate Financial Workflows
  The Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS) announced Fluxnova in partnership with Fidelity Investments, NatWest Group, Bank of Montreal, Deutsche Bank and Capital One. Fluxnova, a fork of Camunda 7, is an open orchestration platform enabling audit‑ready workflows, visual process models and process traceability in heavily regulated financial services environments.
  • Read more about what makes this platform so critical to the ecosystem in the SD Times
• Overture Maps Foundation Names New Executive Director and Lands on Fast Company’s 2025 Next Big Things in Tech List
  William Mortenson has joined the Overture Maps Foundation as its new Executive Director. Mortenson brings more than 25 years of geospatial leadership and begins guiding Overture’s next phase of open map‑data growth, interoperability and adoption. The project also saw major industry recognition this month, landing a spot on the coveted ‘2025 Next Big Things in Tech’ list by Fast Company.
  • Read more about the appointment and industry recognition on the Overture Maps site.
• PyTorch Foundation Welcomes “Ray” to Deliver a Unified Open Source AI Compute Stack
  The PyTorch Foundation announced its latest hosted project: Ray, a widely adopted distributed computing framework that enables scaling AI workloads from a single machine to thousands of nodes. Ray now joins PyTorch and vLLM under the PyTorch Foundation umbrella, reinforcing the open‑source AI stack.
  • More on the project’s contribution to the LF in The New Stack and Forbes
• Major Infrastructure & Edge Release: StarlingX 11.0
  The open‑source cloud infrastructure project hosted by the Open Infrastructure Foundation released version 11.0, bringing enhanced edge‑security, IPv4‑exhaustion mitigation, IPsec pod‑to‑pod encryption and stronger rollback support for complex multi‑cluster deployments.
  • Read more about the new feature and optimization updates in Network World

What’s Next?

• Visit the Ray, Valkey, and Fluxnova GitHub repositories to explore updates and join the community.
• Review the StarlingX 11.0 release notes and see what's new for edge‑cloud ops.

>> Read on for more news, research, and opportunities from across the Linux Foundation.

The recent GOSIM AI Vision Forum in Hangzhou crystallized the central paradox of artificial intelligence: how to harness its immense potential while mitigating its considerable risks. AI is already augmenting our capacity for knowledge work by simplifying discovery, synthesis, and translation, as well as automating routine tasks. This automation frees individuals to engage in more meaningful and creative endeavors. Yet, these advancements are shadowed by urgent challenges, including equitable access, value-aligned governance, and protecting our social fabric from harm. As Dr. Michael Yuan highlights in the foreword of the recent Linux Foundation report Global Cooperation for Human-Centered AI, aligning AI with human values is crucial, but equally important is preparing humans to collaborate effectively with AI—a shift that requires us to evolve our fundamental understanding of work, education, and creativity.

In August, I had the honour of attending the APEC 2025 Global Digital and AI Forum’s AI & Digital Ministerial Meeting in Incheon, South Korea. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to present findings from the first phase of our research in collaboration with Meta, and to join a group of esteemed panelists discussing the numerous pathways for open source AI to transform the region’s 21 member states in different capacities.

This week in New York City at the Open Source in Finance Forum we marked an exciting milestone. This is the fifth consecutive year that Linux Foundation Research and FINOS have collaborated on the State of Open Source in Financial Services Report, and the insights from this year's study are not only impactful for the financial services sector at large, they extend far beyond it. 

Welcome to the October 2025 edition of the Linux Foundation Newsletter.

Autumn is upon us and open source innovation shows no signs of slowing. Over the past month, the Linux Foundation welcomed new projects, celebrated major project milestones, and advanced our mission of enabling open collaboration across industries. Here are more of this month’s highlights:

• React Foundation Launches Under the Linux Foundation
  The Linux Foundation announced the formation of the React Foundation, a new home for React, React Native, and supporting projects to thrive under neutral, open governance. Contributed by Meta and backed by industry leaders, the foundation aims to support the long-term sustainability of one of the world’s most popular front-end frameworks.
  • Read more about the launch in the LF newsroom
  • See additional coverage in InfoWorld and SD Times
• Disney Research, NVIDIA, and Google DeepMind Contribute Newton Physics Engine
  A new project, Newton, has been contributed to the Linux Foundation by Disney Research, DeepMind, and NVIDIA. Newton is a GPU-accelerated physics engine designed for robotic simulation and reinforcement learning—bridging the gap between virtual training and real world deployment.
  • Read more about the project in the LF newsroom
• LF Decentralized Trust (LFDT) Celebrates One Year
  LF Decentralized Trust marked its one-year anniversary with key milestones, including new members, community growth, and the move of Hiero, the distributed ledger technology powering the Hedera network, to graduated project status. The initiative continues to drive forward open source solutions for tokenized assets, verifiable credentials, decentralized identity, and public trust.
  • Recap the progress in the LFDT blog
• What’s Next?
  • Visit React.dev, GitHub repositories for Newton, and Hiero to learn more and get involved.

Read on for more news, research, and opportunities from across the Linux Foundation.

>> PS - LF Europe Member Summit is right around the corner! Register now!

In this second report in our series on the economic value of open source AI, we reviewed the technology’s impact in Africa, the Middle East, and Türkiye (AMET). Drawing on evidence from industry and academia, the study reveals strong adoption and investment trends, enormous economic potential, and transformational workforce and sector impacts. Many of the themes from our global study ring true in AMET as well, alongside some findings that are unique to this region. 

Welcome to the September  2025 edition of the Linux Foundation Newsletter.

Summer is ending, Fall is approaching and the world of open source is as busy as ever. Over the last month, the LF welcomed exciting open source projects and innovations, celebrated major new milestones and launched groundbreaking research. Thank you to all the contributors, maintainers,members and staff driving this impact forward!

Here are more of this month’s highlights:

• AgentGateway and DocumentDB Join the Linux Foundation 
  • Two exciting new projects joined the LF open source portfolio:  AgentGateway—an AI‑native proxy developed by Solo.io—and DocumentDB - a PostgreSQL‑based document database project from Microsoft. 
  • Read more about agentgateway joining the LF in The Next Platform
  • Read more about DocumentDB  joining the LF in Forbes
• LF Europe hosted Open Source Summit EU.
  • From August 25–27, the European open source community convened in Amsterdam for three days of hands-on training, insightful presentations, and vibrant collaboration at Open Source Summit Europe.
  • Highlights included keynote addresses from LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin and LF Europe General Manager Gabriele Columbro, the official launch of the World of Open Source: Europe 2025 and State of Commercial Open Source reports, and the debut of the new Developer Relations Foundation—a first-of-its-kind initiative to elevate the practice of DevRel globally. For those looking for more, session recordings are now available for viewing. 
  • World of Open Source Europe report in betanews 
  • Interview with Jim Zemlin in The New Stack
  • Interview with Gabriele Columbro in diginomica

What’s Next?

• Visit the agentgateway GitHub and DocumentDB GitHub to get involved and contribute to the advancement of these exciting open source projects
• Explore session recordings and slides from Open Source Summit Europe 2025, available now on LF’s YouTube channel.

Read on for more news, research, and opportunities from across the Linux Foundation.

In my week at Open Source Summit Europe and AI_Dev in Amsterdam, the topic of digital sovereignty persisted throughout various keynotes, panels, and hallway track conversations. Control, agency, and participation are seen as critical for Europe’s digital future. But sovereignty does not necessarily equate to solutions built within a country’s borders. Instead, it is seen as a larger movement of capacity-building that places local developers and innovators as builders and decision-makers on the global open source technologies the country or region relies on. This is as relevant in Europe as it is in my home country of Canada, where concerns around digital sovereignty also abound. 

When the first World of Open Source: Europe Spotlight 2022 report was published in Dublin at the time we launched Linux Foundation Europe, it painted a picture of a continent with an undeniable passion for open source — a “romantic” relationship, as our researchers called it. European contributors were motivated by learning and enjoyment more than career advancement. Policies across governments encouraged consumption of open source, and industry leaders recognized its value. However, beneath this enthusiasm, a structural imbalance was clear. Organizations were consuming more open source than they were contributing back, and many sectors, in particular the public sector, lagged in fully embracing open collaboration.

The TODO Group in collaboration with Cloud Native Computing Foundation is thrilled to announce the launch of the physical version of the OSPO Book, a community-driven resource that captures open source management best practices through OSPOs (Open Source Program Offices).

Organizations with OSPOs report stronger AI readiness, better security outcomes and greater upstream participation

I’ve spent three decades in technology, watching brilliant founders pour their hearts into building world-changing open source projects. I’ve seen them cultivate vibrant communities, driven by a shared passion for solving hard problems. And I’ve also seen them arrive at a painful crossroads, forced to choose between the community that built them and the capital they need to survive. It’s a story that has ended too often in compromise, with fractured communities and founders left wondering if there was another way.

In the course of conducting research to explore the intersection of open source innovation and the digital transformation of industries, it’s always exciting to witness major shifts. Today, the mobile sector is on the cusp of a pivotal transformation—one that's been many years in the making.