Faster innovation. There are over 1,300 contributors across major projects, which means that those projects deliver early access to emerging technologies like AI integration and 5G without waiting for vendor roadmaps. 74% of organizations see open source as foundational to AI success in networks.
Real interoperability. Standardized APIs and interfaces mean you can mix and match components from different projects.
Open source foundations drive development and governance
While there can be individual efforts led by companies, the most influential and impactful open -source networking efforts tend to fit into one of the major open source foundations.
The Linux Foundation itself is a ‘foundation of foundations’ and is home to multiple groups including:
Linux Foundation Networking (LFN) hosts the largest portfolio of projects. Formed in 2018 by merging the OPNFV, ONAP, OpenDaylight and FD.io projects, it now includes over a dozen projects spanning software-defined networking (SDN) controllers, orchestration, data plane acceleration, and emerging technologies. Recent 2025 additions include Duranta (Open RAN), Essedum (AI networking) and Project Salus (responsible AI). LFN provides the governance structure for projects like OpenDaylight, ONOS, ONAP, DPDK, VPP and Nephio.
Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) focuses on containerized applications. With over 700 member organizations, CNCF graduated the projects that now run most Kubernetes networking: Cilium, Istio, Linkerd, Envoy, and CoreDNS. The foundation’s incubating and sandbox projects include CNI (container networking interface) implementations like Contour, Kube-OVN, and Antrea.
