Inside a BBC open source fork: Upstreaming, legal issues, and maintenance

"This is very much a fork that's supposed to be kept up to date with Mainline. This isn't a divergence or a competitive or hostile fork..."

By Noah Bovenizer

Oct 8, 2026 4:05 PM 3 min read

Inside a BBC open source fork: Upstreaming, legal issues, and maintenance — BBC Senior Principal Software Engineer Tom Sadler at the Open Source Summit. Image Credit: The Stack

The BBC has used open source technology for as long as it has been online and has opened at least 85 projects built by its tech team, but its unique challenges often make it harder to contribute back to the community, one of the engineers behind its dash.js fork has said.

During a talk at The Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit in Prague, Senior Principal Software Engineer Tom Sadler outlined the organisation’s approach to the fork, and the legal challenges of upstreaming its code.

Dash.js is a JavaScript implementation for playing DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) content in browser-based environments, used by the BBC for streaming media on its websites and on connected TV apps.

The implementation “gives us slightly lower-level control over media streaming, especially around adaptive bit rates and live streams,” said Sadler.

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Noah Bovenizer

Noah Bovenizer is a senior reporter with The Stack. He previously covered the transportation sector for Global Data. He has a first class degree in journalism and has also worked as a newsreader for Gaydio.