Open Source for Sustainability: How Projects under the Linux Foundation Are Helping to Advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals is a September 2023 Linux Foundation Research report by Kirsten D. Sandberg. It maps examples of open-source projects and communities to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), arguing that shared digital assets and the communities that steward them can support development work. The report is an exploratory collection of case studies—not an independent evaluation proving that any listed project caused a measurable SDG outcome.
What the report means by sustainability
The report uses “sustainability” in two related senses. One is the contribution that digital tools may make to social, economic, or environmental goals. The other is the long-term viability of the tools themselves: whether people use them, whether a community forms around them, and whether stewards consider the context and effects of their use.
That framing makes the report broader than a survey of software. It considers open software, standards, data, content, AI models, and hardware, as well as community stewardship and organizational practices. Its central idea is that open source can function both as reusable digital public infrastructure and as a collaborative way to build and maintain shared resources.
What Sandberg’s study set out to examine
The report asks three questions: whether an open asset can help users make progress toward one or more SDGs; whether the project or its organization advances goals through documented work by maintainers, contributors, communities, and working or special-interest groups; and what open-source communities can teach about stewardship of public goods.
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The examples include work already launched, in development, or proposed. Those different stages matter: a proposed use case is not evidence of deployment, and a project description is not an outcome measurement. The report’s cases are useful for understanding possible applications and approaches to collaboration, but they should not be read as proof of impact.
Examples across sectors
Sandberg’s report and its companion infographic show how varied the assets and use cases can be. The descriptions below reflect how the report presents the examples; they do not independently establish results or current project status.
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| Example | Open asset and described use | Evidence boundary |
|---|---|---|
| AgStack | Field-boundary data, modeling, and applications intended to help farmers manage water, fertilizer, and labor. | The report describes potential farm-management uses; it does not quantify resulting resource savings. |
| LF Public Health | Projects that include verifiable credentials for test or vaccination records. | The report presents the projects as public-health tools, not as an evaluation of health outcomes. |
| ClusterDuck Protocol | Open firmware for customizable sensor and communications networks that could help restore communications when infrastructure fails. | The report describes a possible emergency-response use; it does not document a measured recovery outcome. |
| RISC-V and open hardware specifications | Open hardware specifications framed as a route to reproducible hardware and potentially more efficient computing or energy use. | Potential efficiency is not the same as a measured energy reduction. |
| Open education and training content | Reusable learning materials intended to build technical skills and broaden access to training. | The report discusses content and talent development; the figures it cites are dated and should not be treated as current enrollment measures. |
| Botanical Water Technologies | Tracking water otherwise wasted in agricultural production. | The report identifies the application but does not quantify water recovered or the net environmental effect. |
| Smart Parks | Zephyr-based embedded trackers used in conservation and anti-poaching work. | The report describes the use case, not an independently verified measure of conservation impact. |
Together, these cases illustrate the report’s breadth: open source can involve software, hardware, data, standards, or learning content, and may be applied in agriculture, health, emergency communications, education, water management, and conservation.
What the report’s numbers do—and do not—show
Sandberg’s September 2023 report says open-source assets had become vital to “80–90 percent” of software then used and cites a 2023 sample reporting “96 percent.” These are figures as presented in the report, which points to earlier work in its endnotes. They are not a fresh 2026 estimate or a universal measurement of all software. Readers needing to rely on either number should consult the original studies cited by the report.
Other figures in the report have similarly specific contexts:
- The Linux Foundation reported 495 events from 2016 through August 2023.
- The report described the Linux Foundation’s YouTube content as including over 1,000 videos in 2023.
- The report attributed an 80 percent figure for edX learners outside North America to edX’s 2022 impact report.
- The report cited a 2017 UN Global Compact forecast that digital technology, particularly open source, could unlock $2.1 trillion in annual revenue for the technology sector by 2030. That is a forecast made in 2017, not a realized or current revenue measurement.
These statistics provide historical context for the report’s argument; they do not measure the sustainability outcomes of the individual projects in its case studies.
Why open-source stewardship is part of the argument
The report treats collaboration and maintenance as more than background conditions. Shared assets can be reused, but they need people and organizations able to maintain them, guide their use, and build local technical capacity. In the report’s foreword, Bilel Jamoussi, Deputy-Director of the Telecommunications Standardization Bureau at the International Telecommunication Union, says: “Standardization and open source projects can make powerful, mutually reinforcing contributions to sustainable development, but this work is driven by a strong will to come together and build consensus on the way forward.”
Training is one part of that capacity question. The report quotes Clyde Seepersad, then Senior Vice President and General Manager of Linux Foundation Training and Certification, saying: “What is structurally missing in a sustainability and developing economy context is technical talent. If you’re going to move as expeditiously as possible, then having homegrown talent within the local organization really helps.” The point is that durable local skills and contributor communities may matter alongside the technology itself; the report does not establish that a particular training program is currently available or measure its effects.
How to read the report critically
Use the report as a map of possible connections between open projects and the SDGs, not as a scorecard of proven results. For any case that matters to a decision, distinguish the stage of development from actual deployment, and look for evidence on outcomes, beneficiaries, geography, governance, and ongoing maintenance. Project status and availability can change after publication, so the report’s September 2023 descriptions should not be assumed to reflect current conditions.
The report’s core contribution is to widen the sustainability conversation: open digital assets may be useful in development work, while the health of the projects and communities behind those assets is itself a stewardship challenge. Its examples make that proposition concrete, but readers should keep the difference between a plausible use case and independently measured impact in view.
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