Open source as an important lever for more sustainability in IT

3 reasons why open source is not only a crucial starting point for better performance and efficiency, but also for achieving sustainability and ESG goals in companies.

The open source movement started as a reaction to the patents and proprietary solutions of the major software and hardware manufacturers. A number of computer scientists had embarked on a crusade to promote and defend free software in the 1980s. Since then, open source has successfully continued its triumphal march. According to Bitkom, over three quarters of German companies now use Open Source Software (OSS) – and the trend is risingⁱ. Due to its widespread use, OSS today has a significant impact on IT applications and thus the entire IT footprint in companies. This is always particularly evident, for example, when there is a security gap in a widely used open source solution or an OSS framework, as was recently the case with Log4j. But other areas of IT are also strongly influenced by OSS. Software expert and developer Fabien Potencier from platform.sh explains what decisive influence the community or open source developers have on improving not only the performance of IT applications, but also their energy efficiency and environmental friendliness.

When David Braben and Ian Bell designed the Elite space trading game for the BBC Model B in 1984, they had to fit eight galaxies into just 32 kilobytes of memory. In today’s game versions, each image alone is five times larger. The higher availability of memory and computing power opened up many new possibilities for developers. At the same time, this reduced the pressure to program them as efficiently as possible. However, efficient coding has an impact on how much computing power and storage is required in companies.

Due to digitization, almost every organization is now an IT company. The ever-increasing amounts of data being processed, the expansion of infrastructure and the number of applications have meant that IT is now responsible for around four percent of all carbon emissions worldwide. That’s as much as the airline industry generates and might even increase in the future. In many companies, the topic of energy consumption by IT has not only come into focus because of the high electricity prices. Other reasons are also obligations in the course of CSR and ESG reporting as well as the concrete goals for more sustainability – up to net zero – that companies have promised their investors and stakeholders.

But how can companies tackle this problem and make their IT more sustainable? There are of course numerous starting points, from efficient shared cloud use, SaaS instead of more and more own hardware and much more

One point that hasn’t been discussed much is the tremendous impact open source software can have on this topic. There are convincing arguments for this:

Wide distribution as an opportunity

After the discovery of a vulnerability in the Log4j framework, the security authority (BSI) issued a red alert cyber security warning at the end of 2022. The reason for this was the extremely high distribution of Log4j. This example shows that there are open source software modules that are found in practically every application. Because for many areas it makes little sense for IT departments to develop new tools if there are already very well-functioning, available and open-source solutions.

Widespread use can pose a massive problem during security incidents. At the same time, the extremely high consistency can also represent an opportunity. Because it offers a starting point where small changes have a big impact on a huge number of companies and users.

Further development as a core quality

While other industries have been trying for decades to change their processes and become more efficient and climate-friendly, this topic is relatively new for the IT industry. However, one can be more optimistic regarding the chances of success for a new way of thinking than in many other industries. Because in IT, constant innovations and adjustments are part of the core of the work. At the same time, due to the enormous spread of IT applications, even small changes can make a big difference.

Software developers have a major impact on the energy consumption of the applications they develop. Studies show savings potential of up to 25 percent for the energy consumption of software solutions. Intelligent coding can greatly reduce CO2 consumption, which is why green coding has also become a buzzword.

Common purpose

Change can be brought regarding even faster when many developers work together and use the knowledge of the entire community – and the essence of open source is precisely this cooperation. While specific contributors drive the project forward, provide direction, and accept changes, each contributor can take a specific bug or feature request and create code that solves that problem. This is an extremely efficient and effective way of working together.

So far, however, this has not necessarily led to efficient code. Because at the moment, open source projects focus primarily on functions and bugs. This is common practice and makes sense to a certain extent. However, given the general climate trend and our future, but also for the environmental goals that companies have set themselves, it is wise to make efficiency a permanent part of open source development. If the entire community keeps sustainability goals in mind right from the start, includes them in considerations and carries out appropriate analyses, then open source software can make a decisive contribution to reducing emissions in the entire IT sector.

“If you want to seriously promote sustainability, this only works if you do it in a goal-oriented and very conscious manner, and not as a side effect,” explains Fabien Potencier. “The community would have to formulate sustainability as a common, concrete interest beyond technical issues. Even when planning and writing the code, developers should think regarding the ecological impact. If that succeeds, open source might once once more have a decisive influence on the Internet”.

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