This figure comes from the body’s State of Open: Show us the Money — The Economics of Open Source Software report, published today, 14 June.

In what it believes to be potentially the first GVA contribution analysis for open source anywhere in the world, OpenUK took estimates from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport that the 2022 GVA of the UK’s tech sector was £50.71 billion.

It then took the average revenue from open source software by companies in the UK tech sector in 2022 to identify £13.59 billion of value generated by open source-related products and services.

The report stated that “This finding is important as it demonstrated that besides investment, open innovation, sharing of knowledge and collaboration, the productive capacity of Open Source Software accounts for over a quarter of the UK tech sector GVA in 2022.”

Speaking of investment, OpenUK also found that 44% of organisations will increase their investment in open source in the coming 12 months, while 47% anticipate their investment will stay the same. Only 2% said they intend to decrease investment.

According to the report, “if those who intend to increase their investment do so by the average investment of our sample, it will add a further £225.2 million to £326.6 million of investment in technology in the UK.”

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In terms of how the UK open source software market can be grown and developed further, Matt Barker, the co-founder of Jetstack and the Entrepreneur in Residence at OpenUK, suggested that lessons could be learned from our American counterparts, not least when it comes to commercialisation.

“Brits know how to create cutting edge Open Source Software, but Americans know how to grow and commercialise it,” he said.

“Fortunately we’re learning, and where 10 years ago it was second-hand from the likes of Elastic, Confluent, MongoDB, it’s gotten a bit closer to home thanks to the success of Snyk, Revolut, Babylon, Hopin and others.

“It was only a few years ago I was struggling to find people in the UK with any first hand experience of productising and commercialising software at a large scale, but as we continue to evolve, I’m growing more certain in the ability to find those people now we’ve created a few home runs of our own.”