Guest: Hilary Carter (LinkedIn)
Organization: Linux Foundation (Twitter)

In its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the United Nations introduced 17 SDGs as “a plan of action for people, planet, and prosperity.” For its part, the Linux Foundation started its Sustainability Initiative to understand how its projects map to the different dimensions of sustainable development.

In an interview recorded at the Open Source Summit in Vancouver, Linux Foundation SVP of Research and Communications Hilary Carter explains the Foundation’s sustainability initiative, its basis and long-term goals.

When defining sustainability, the Linux Foundation aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a widely adopted and recognized framework for enterprises, governments, and society, at large. There is a moral obligation associated with the Sustainable Development Goals: the poorest people cannot be behind to make economic gains.

The 17 SDGs include:

1. no poverty
2. zero hunger
3. good health and well-being
4. quality education
5. gender equality
6. clean water and sanitation
7. affordable and clean energy
8. decent work and economic growth
9. industry, innovation, and infrastructure
10. reduced inequalities
11. sustainable cities and communities
12. responsible consumption and production
13. climate action
14. life below water
15. life on land
16. peace, justice, and strong institutions
17. partnerships for the goals.

Each project under the Linux Foundation umbrella was reviewed:

• Does the project’s open-source asset help its users to make progress toward one or more of the UN Sustainable Development Goals?
• Does the project itself or its organization help to advance one or more of the UN Sustainable Development Goals?

Results indicate that:

• The Linux Foundation projects are strong in Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure.
• The Linux Foundation projects are strong in areas around Quality Education. Through events and free training programs, research, case studies, and the knowledge assets that it co-creates, but in its efforts to sustain the internet and the web, and enable access to all resources through the internet, mobile technologies and democratize learning through learning infrastructure.
• There was not a lot of alignment with some of the goals for Clean Water and Sanitation as well as Life Below Water. This is somewhat alarming because the ocean is vital to our survival. There are incredible opportunities to leverage technology to protect marine protected areas, to use monitoring systems and environmental DNA to actually count the fish that we have.
• The Linux Foundation sustains the infrastructure to support the global digital economy through open-source software, open hardware, open standards, and open data. This effort supports SDG #9 which is industry, infrastructure, and innovation. The Foundation provides infrastructure that is cost effective, robust, tried-and-true, and widely available and accessible.
• It minimizes duplication and creates opportunities for innovation all around the world by making code bases available.
• There are certain projects that were established with the objective of sustainability as part of their project’s mission and vision. Examples: LF Energy, Open Source Climate (OS-Climate), and AgStack Foundation.
• Other projects were born from emerging technologies. Example: Blockchain came out of a need for a new monetary system, but it found its way into applications and supply chains and the value that comes from shared datasets. These technologies have been applied in a sustainability context and in use cases that drive forward health, safety, poverty reduction, and access to equal economic opportunities.
• To ensure project sustainability, particularly the essential infrastructure projects, there is a need to ensure there are enough contributors going forward, enough funding, enough resources, and enough tools to make sure that the developer experience is optimized.

On commercialization and support:

• A billion euros goes a long way to ensure sustainability. For the Linux Foundation communities, it’s absolutely crucial. Everything that it does is freely available to the world, so it suffers from free ridership.
• Carter is very grateful to those organizations who partner with the Linux Foundation, who join as members, and who fund the research. Without resources through government grants and partnerships, it would not exist.
• She is committed to returning as much of value back to them through insights from data that can help them grow their businesses and help them convince their leaders about the economic value of open-source projects.

What’s ahead:

• The Linux Foundation Software Developer Diversity and Inclusion (SDDI) project is launching a new research to 1) measure which projects have implemented best practices to ensure sustainable, welcoming, and inclusive communities, 2) identify the tactics they deployed, and 3) determine how effective they were, and 4) the lessons learned from those projects.

This summary was written by Camille Gregory.