Over 38,325 UK-based developers made at least one contribution to open source software (OSS) projects over the past three months, said OpenUK.
UK open-source grew 7% year-on-year – notably slower than India (50,054, up 19.4%) or Germany (49,077, up 8.3%), according to the non-profit.
The advocacy group is urging the UK Government to play more of a market-maker role – in part to improve sovereign software capabilities.
Earlier this year it called on HMG to set up a dedicated hub for UK public sector open source innovation projects so that software innovation built on government work becomes a sustainable and repeatable public good.
OpenAI CEO Amanda Brock said: “A program to encourage skills development and capacity building in open source would give the UK a significant advantage in the digital future. We are already seeing this in other countries like Kenya as part of their sovereignty journey...”
The Sovereign AI fund launched on April 16 with $500 million in funding – generous for a public sector IT initiative; not much in the grand scheme of things where VAST Data, for example, raised double that in a Series F round.
The AI fund also promises that the companies it invests in will keep their IP.
Brock thinks there should be more of a ‘profit share’ arrangement where public funding is involved, as well as more use of open source licenses for new projects that could be re-used; creating an intellectual commons.
“We’ve proposed a national foundation for the UK (like China’s Open Atom) and would expect that body to have the funding management function,” she said.
Brock also pointed to Dr Rebecca Taylor’s research on unpaid work, contribution and the place of maintainers; highlighting the need to fund the underlying OSS ecosystem and create infrastructure for open source success.
For technology leaders, the health of open source projects that their team uses can swiftly become an issue. (The XKCD strip about open source projects propping up the internet due to one maintainer in Nebraska is the well-known illustrative example; plenty of others continue to abound.)
Her comments and OpenAI’s quarterly report come after the UK’s Minister for AI claimed that “Britain will be the home of global open source AI talent.”
Speaking in February, Kanishka Narayan said: “If we do this – restore agency in taking risk, in succeeding, in building across our country – we will have done a huge service. We will have also done it by restoring another sort of agency: the agency of the state, our collective vehicle for progress.”
Want to talk about where the rubber hits the road when it comes to OSS, public policy, and UK sovereignty? The Stack is putting on one of its informal “Sessions” discussions in London in late June (precise date TBC soon) with Dr Brock and other speakers. Make sure you are subscribed to our newsletter for more.
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