One of the top most active projects within FINOS right now is FDC3! Read Rob's blog and check out FDC3 under Projects & SIGs.

The FINOS Open Source Readiness SIG’s (Special Interest Group) main mission is to engage with financial institutions and help them address challenges encountered when venturing into the world of open source consumption and collaboration, often to accelerate technology innovation and efficiency.

In the first quarter of 2022, a multi-organisation, multi-location team of developers planned, scheduled and delivered an ambitious three day “RegTech” collaboration challenge. The event, dubbed a “TechSprint”, looked to demonstrate how financial institutions could comply with trade reporting rules for the upcoming US CFTC requirements using entirely open-source components.

From our recent State of Open Source in Financial Services report, it indicates that financial organizations should engage in collaborative activities across various types of job functions to reap the benefits of open source.

I often talk about “engineering experience” and the importance for open source projects to provide fast, easy and impactful ways for open source consumers to realise return on engagement. Just like e-commerce stores that invest in user experience to encourage repeat sales, successful open source projects provide a slick installation, well written contextual documentation and a very compelling engagement model that encourages collaboration.

With the recent contribution of the Electron-FDC3 project into FINOS, the questions of security, Electron, and desktop containers in finserv applications may be top of mind for some in the industry. So, I thought it might be helpful to provide a view of the major security concerns for desktop containers, the current state of security in Electron, and the approach we’re taking in Electron-FDC3.

Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) has the power to transform economies — connecting people, governments, businesses, and organizations locally and globally through technology that could not have been imagined even 20 years ago, and with more advances on the way.

Have you read the The State of Open Source in Financial Services report yet? The report gives insight into open source leadership, governance, collaboration and much more. One of the key findings show that respondents have an appetite to consume and contribute to open source but lack clarity about governance, policies, processes, tools and training. As indicated in the below infographic the results show that 67% have an open source policy at their organization, 21% do not and 11% do not know. So there’s room for further improvements in the financial services industry.

Orchestrating Legend with Juju

It’s been almost 5 years since the FDC3 standards initiative kicked off. In that time, FDC3 has grown from a gleam in the eyes of a handful of technologists to a living and thriving standard adopted by a critical mass of banks and buy-side firms as well as key data and service providers such as FactSet and Symphony. The success of the FDC3 standard has been driven by the heroic efforts of its community and maintainers, as well as by a real need in the market for an open solution to the application interop problem. Throughout this time, one critical piece of the ecosystem has been missing: a complete and fully open source implementation. Today I am excited to announce that this is no longer the case, and a fully Electron based open source implementation has been contributed to FINOS, where we are expecting it to be a critical resource for the FDC3 developer community.

Let’s get down to basics. What we are here for, what you are entitled to and most importantly what we all can do together. FINOS - We're a Community Creating Open-Source Solutions for Financial Services, providing an independent setting to deliver software and standards that address common industry challenges and drive innovation. This year more than ever, we’re focusing our attention on Member Success. Your firms joined FINOS for a reason and it is our imperative to help uncover, address and facilitate the OS needs of your organizations.

FINOS’ recent report on The State of Open Source in Financial Services highlighted a number of key insights into open source leadership, governance, collaboration and much more. One of the key findings indicated that firms could benefit from making open source part of their strategy and culture with clear leadership and communication. The results show that 50% of respondents had a leader for fostering an open source culture within their firm. So there’s definitely room for more organizations to embrace the concept.