https://github.blog/2021-02-23-open-source-in-the-5g-stack/

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[policy-social-1]

February 23, 2021

Open source
Policy

Open source in the 5G stack

 
Image of Peter Cihon

Peter Cihon

Developers know the value of openness, and increasingly policymakers
are taking note. Open source and open standards approaches offer
promising solutions to mounting policy problems related to digital
sovereignty. One such area where open approaches can help is 5G. The
U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration
(NTIA) recently requested suggestions for an innovation challenge to
accelerate the development of the open 5G stack ecosystem. GitHub
filed a submission that emphasized the benefits of open source best
practices and metrics in such a challenge.

Open source provides governments concerned with digital sovereignty
and self-reliance with tools and developer best practices to ensure
local benefits from global software collaboration. With open source,
collaboration can provide solutions based on the merits of commits,
not politics or proprietary interests. Open source is inclusive: if
policymakers are concerned about the national origins of a project,
nothing is standing in the way of them or their allies joining as
well. And when it comes to security and interoperability, open source
is one of the best methods we have: the broader community of security
analysts can inspect source code to identify and address
vulnerabilities, and a wider universe of developers can leverage open
standards into the open source solutions.

It is no surprise that amid controversies over the security,
development, and deployment of 5G, some have turned to open source
development for portions of the 5G stack. Some promising efforts
include the Open Network Automation Platform working with DARPA and
the OpenAirInterface working with the NSF, among others. Still
others, including the Open RAN Coalition, are emphasizing open
standards and using open source practices for some development.

In our filing to the NTIA, we described how best practices in open
source and software development more broadly could support NTIA's
goals of a possible innovation challenge: to reduce barriers to entry
for diverse actors to collaborate on an open 5G stack. We also
emphasized the importance of inventorying dependencies, and the
NTIA's software bill of materials in particular, for building trust
and driving adoption of an open 5G stack. We defined open source,
referencing the Open Source Initiative's definition, as policymakers
have sometimes misdefined or confused the term open source with other
uses of "open" meaning simply interoperable or available to all. We
also offered metrics and criteria for the NTIA to consider in
assessing 5G stack solutions against open source best practices.

Time and again, the developer community has created open source
solutions to address pressing needs. Many of these solutions,
including for government challenges and in the 5G stack, have been
developed on GitHub. We stand committed to helping policymakers
around the world understand how collaborative development and open
source can address legitimate concerns around participation,
security, sovereignty, and interoperability--in 5G and beyond. You can
read our entire submission here.

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