The US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) teamed with the Linux Foundation to boost development of open 5G, edge, AI and IoT technologies, a move the consortium’s CRO and COO Mike Woster told Mobile World Live (MWL) reflected increased interest from governments worldwide.

Their deal covers creation of a new US Government Open Programmable Secure (US GOV OPS) initiative to function as a standard open source programme governed by the Linux Foundation.

The first project in the programme will focus on using open source software and systems to create a secure end-to-end 5G reference architecture to deliver the ability to rapidly rollout new features, mitigate large-scale botnet and other threats, and deploy secure network slices which can operate on untrusted infrastructure.

Woster told MWL the US GOV OPS programme is the first of “multiple” government collaborations Linux Foundation expects to announce this year as “all governments worldwide” begin to see value in open source technology due to its ability to offer increased transparency and access to a multi-vendor environment.

He added the involvement of large end-users with substantial buying power like the US government is expected to be a significant driver of increased alignment on, and participation in, open source R&D.

“This is exciting because it’s a major end user, in this case it’s DARPA, saying that a 5G end-to-end reference architecture of open source projects is important to them. That’s going to increase development from a broad constituent group, and that’s going to benefit all open source and current upstream open source projects.”

The move is the latest from the US on 5G: the government is currently exploring the creation of a 5G Challenge to boost the open ecosystem, and in 2020 enlisted more than a dozen vendors to conduct trials at five military installations.