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 ways that open technologies and the communities around them may support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Its cases illustrate possible contributions, not proof that any project alone caused measurable progress toward a goal.
What the report means by “sustainability”
The report uses sustainability in two related senses. It examines how open digital assets—software, standards, data, content, AI models and hardware—might help people address social, economic and environmental needs. It also asks whether the technologies and communities themselves can endure.
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For technology, the report’s definition of sustainability concerns long-term viability: whether people use the technology, whether a community forms around it, and whether its stewards consider the context and effects of its use. A project’s openness may make an asset reusable, but reuse and lasting maintenance still depend on people and organizations.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesThe report frames open source both as shared digital infrastructure and as a collaborative way to steward public goods. Its central questions are whether an open asset can help users make progress toward SDGs, how project communities and organizations contribute through their work, and what those communities can teach about stewardship. It includes use cases described as launched, in development or proposed.
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Examples across sectors
Sandberg’s report and its companion infographic describe examples from agriculture, health, emergency communications, education, conservation and computing. The table summarizes the use cases as presented in the 2023 material; it does not establish their current status or independently measured impact.
| Example | Open asset and intended use | Evidence qualification |
|---|---|---|
| AgStack | Field-boundary data, modeling and applications intended to help farmers manage water, fertilizer and labor. | A use case described by the report; no quantified outcome is established here. |
| LF Public Health | Projects that include verifiable credentials for test or vaccination records. | The report describes the application; it does not independently evaluate health outcomes. |
| ClusterDuck Protocol | Open firmware for customizable sensor and communications networks that could help restore communications after infrastructure failures. | Potential emergency use, as described in the report, rather than proof of effectiveness in a specific disaster. |
| RISC-V and open hardware specifications | Open hardware specifications presented as a path to reproducible hardware and potential energy or computing efficiencies. | Potential benefits are not quantified as achieved savings in the report. |
| Open education and training content | Reusable learning materials intended to build technical skills and widen access to training. | The report discusses content and reach; figures it cites are dated, not current estimates. |
| Botanical Water Technologies | Tracking water otherwise wasted during agricultural production. | A described application; the report does not provide an independently verified net water-impact measure. |
| Smart Parks | Zephyr-based embedded trackers used in conservation and anti-poaching work. | The report describes the application, not a quantified conservation outcome. |
Together, the examples show the report’s breadth: an open asset might be code, a specification, data or learning content, and the intended benefit depends on how people apply and maintain it. The cases should be read as illustrations of plausible routes to SDG-related work, not as a ranking of projects or a measurement of their net effect.
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What the report’s statistics do—and do not—show
Several numbers in the report are historical figures or forecasts with specific dates and sources. They should not be presented as fresh 2026 measurements.
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Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →- Software: 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.” Those figures are reported by the 2023 report, which points to earlier work in its endnotes; they are not a universal, current estimate of software use.
- Events: The report counts 495 Linux Foundation events from 2016 through August 2023.
- Videos: The report describes Linux Foundation YouTube content as exceeding 1,000 videos in 2023.
- Online learning: The report attributes the figure that 80 percent of edX learners were outside North America to edX’s 2022 impact report.
- Economic forecast: The report cites a 2017 UN Global Compact estimate that digital technology, particularly open source, could unlock $2.1 trillion in annual revenue for the technology sector by 2030. This is a forecast made in 2017, not a reported realized or current figure.
These figures provide context for the report’s argument about scale, participation and skills. They do not quantify the sustainability impact of the individual project examples.
Why skills and community matter
The report treats people and stewardship as part of the sustainability question, not as an afterthought to the technology. A reusable tool needs users; an enduring project needs a community able to maintain it; and local technical capacity can affect whether an organization can put a tool to work.
Clyde Seepersad, then Senior Vice President and General Manager of Linux Foundation Training and Certification, said: “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 report also points to open educational content as a way to nurture that capacity. His statement expresses an organizational perspective, rather than an independent evaluation of training outcomes.
The foreword, by Bilel Jamoussi, Deputy-Director of the Telecommunications Standardization Bureau at the International Telecommunication Union, makes a related point: “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.” The emphasis is on coordination: open specifications and software can complement each other, but collaboration and governance are necessary to make shared infrastructure useful.
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How to read the report’s impact claims
The report is an exploratory case-study and mapping exercise, not an independent impact evaluation. It connects projects to possible SDG contributions and describes the communities and organizational work around them. The material presented does not establish quantified net sustainability benefits for the listed projects or show that an open technology by itself achieved an SDG.
For a careful assessment of any example, separate the project’s stated purpose from evidence of results. Useful questions include:
- What asset is open—software, data, a standard, content, a model or hardware?
- Is the use case launched, in development or proposed, and who is meant to benefit?
- What outcome has actually been measured, by whom, and over what period?
- Who maintains the asset, and what community or governance arrangements support it?
- Are local skills, infrastructure and operating conditions sufficient for the intended use?
These distinctions matter because potential is not the same as demonstrated impact, and openness alone does not guarantee long-term maintenance or equitable results.
Later context and the report’s date
In its later COP28 announcement, the Linux Foundation described its projects as “transformative, digital public goods vital to the acceleration of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.” This is a statement by Hilary Carter, SVP Research & Communications at the Linux Foundation, not an independent outcome assessment. The announcement also quotes My Truong, Chair of the Sustainable & Scalable Infrastructure Alliance, describing Open19 V2 as addressing “the emerging power and cooling requirements of next-generation workloads in a consistent, reusable form.” These remarks add organizational context but do not update the report’s statistical claims or establish current status for the cases above.
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