GeoPython 2023

The transition to a more sustainable future requires not only technological innovation, but also new opportunities for society to participate in the development and adoption of technologies. Open source culture has demonstrated how transparent and collaborative innovation can support modern digital services, data and infrastructure. Open Source Software accelerates the transition to a sustainable economy by supporting traceable decision-making, building capacity for localisation and customisation of climate technologies, and most importantly, helping to prevent greenwashing. Despite the transformative impact of open source culture, its potential for developing environmentally sustainable technologies is not well understood.

This study provides the first analysis of the open source software ecosystem in the field of sustainability and climate technology. Thousands of actively developed open source projects and organizations were collected and systematically analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods as part of the Open Sustainable Technology project. The analysis covers multiple dimensions – including the technical, the social, and the organisational. It highlights key risks and challenges for users, developers, and decision-makers as well as opportunities for more systemic collaboration. Based on these unique insights, we were also able to define the Open Sustainability Principles that embody open source in sustainability.

This analysis indicates that open source still plays a minor role as a long-term transformation strategy in sustainability compared to other domains. Half of all identified projects are in data-rich fields such as climate science, biosphere, energy system modelling, transportation and buildings. Other topics, such as carbon offsets, battery technology, sustainable investment, emission observation and integrated assessment modelling, show few notable developments. Newly emerging topics such as green software were identified based on popularity growth. Most identified projects are relatively young, with a median age of 4.45 years. Moreover, programming languages Python and R dominate the ecosystem, and permissive licences such as MIT are preferred, followed by copyleft licence GPLv3.

Analysis of the distribution of knowledge, work, and project governance reveals that small open source communities lead most of the development. On average, Open Source Software projects rely heavily on a single developer responsible for ~70% of the contributions to a project. In addition, academia and several government agencies contribute significantly to open source, while the lack of for-profit organisations and start-ups with open source business models is remarkable. Finally, most Open Source Software projects are based largely in Europe and North America, with a small number of projects from the Global South. Larger development efforts by organisations based in India and China are underrepresented or nonexistent.

This report presents the first-of-its-kind analysis of open source technology in sustainability, providing the empirical backbone for guiding community building, policy development and future investment. Based on this analysis, we, therefore, propose recommendations for those interested in supporting Open Source Software in environmental sustainability more effectively via:

• Strengthening the interconnectivity and knowledge exchange of the identified open source communities.
• Building capacity and increasing potential for real-world impact by connecting projects to local use cases.
• Closing the knowledge gap on the environmental impact of companies through open source principles.
• Adapting and extending existing open source projects for underrepresented countries in the global south.
• Creating incubators and other support programmes for open source software in environmental sustainability as well as dedicated funds that provide core funding for development and maintenance.
• Developing better technical interfaces between platforms, data, models and open source tools across and within sectors to “stop reinventing the wheel”.
• Standardising environmental data exchange across different levels of government.
• Transforming financial institutions through transparent and scientific decision-making for sustainable investments.

In conclusion, we are convinced that digital and sustainable transformation must converge as a digital public good if we are to achieve agreed environmental goals and create a safe and equitable corridor for people and the planet. Open sustainability principles can help governments, research institutes, nongovernmental organizations, and businesses move quickly toward science-based decarbonization and conservation of natural resources and ecosystems by providing critical transparency, traceable decision-making, and collaboration on innovation.