There are almost as many open source groups and projects working on edge computing as there are definitions of edge — one such project, in fact, focuses exclusively on defining edge terms. This is partially due to the hype, and consolidation will probably happen as the hype turns into real-life deployments and concrete use cases.

We’re already seeing some signs of open source groups working together to solve edge challenges and take advantage of the opportunity it provides. The Linux Foundation and open standards body ETSI, for example, recently signed a memorandum of understanding to “bring open source and standards closer and foster synergies between them.” As it relates to edge, this means Akraino — which is the Linux Foundation’s open source edge software stack — will incorporate the ETSI Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) APIs directly into the stack.

For the purposes of this article we’re focusing on three open source groups, the Linux Foundation’s LF Edge, Open19 Foundation, and OpenStack Foundation’s Edge Computing Group, which have recently been in the headlines and hosted summits. Here’s a closer look at what each is doing, and why open source is important at the edge.

While the Linux Foundation is arguably the 800-pound gorilla in the open source software space, its edge-specific umbrella organization, LF Edge, is one of the newest edge groups (although the projects it houses are not all new). The Linux Foundation formed LF Edge in January, and its list of founding members reads like a who’s who of chipmakers (Arm, Intel, and Qualcomm), telecommunications companies (AT&T, NTT, and Ericsson), cloud providers (Baidu and Tencent), and edge infrastructure vendors (Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Packet, and Vapor IO), to name a few. It now counts over 60 member companies in addition to associates and liaison member organizations such as the Automotive Edge Computing Consortium and the Industrial Internet Consortium.

The new group also houses five open source edge projects: Akraino Edge Stack, EdgeX Foundry, the Open Glossary of Edge Computing, Home Edge Project, and Project EVE (Edge Virtualization Engine). Last week the Linux Foundation received initial seed code from Zededa for Project EVE. Also last week, Arpit Joshipura, general manager, for networking, IoT, and edge computing at the Linux Foundation, gave a keynote at the Open19 Foundation Summit discussing collaboration between the two groups. LF Foundation wants to provide a common framework across four edge market segments (IoT, cloud, telecom, and enterprise) and “harmonize them from a software perspective so we can move edge forward,” Joshipura said.

“The speed of innovation for edge can only happen in open source,” Joshipura said in an interview with SDxCentral. “But the biggest challenge is the fragmentation.”

First, there’s the challenge to define what — and where — the edge is. “There’s not a single vendor or end user or community that can lead the market by defining what edge is, and that’s the first reason why they all come together and worked with the Linux Foundation to create LF Edge,” Joshipura said. This is also why the Open Glossary of Edge Computing, which provides a collection of terms related to edge computing, became one of group’s initial projects. The glossary got its start as a piece of the inaugural “State of the Edge” report published last June by a group of vendors: Packet, Vapor IO, Rafay Systems, Ericsson UDN, and Arm.

The second reason for forming LF Edge was that these four market segments “are all solving the same software problem — lifecycle management, abstraction, connectivity options — again and again,” Joshipura said. “That’s not where the differentiation is, and that’s the sweet spot of open source. So it was natural to say let’s solve this one, let’s have a standard framework, and we will differentiate on top.”

This idea of differentiating (and thus, making money) through customized services or complimentary tools on top of open source standards isn’t unique to edge computing. But it’s perhaps more acutely felt at edge locations, which are typically much smaller than a traditional data center (like a telco central office, a school closet, or a small retail outlet), or in difficult-to-access locations (like an oil rig or the base of a cell tower) and without dedicated IT staff on site.

This makes standardization even more important, and it’s part of the reason why about six months ago open source hardware group Open19 Foundation shifted to an “extreme focus on the edge,” said Yuval Bachar, the organization’s president, at last week’s Open19 Foundation Summit.

The Open19 Foundation grew out of the open data center concept that LinkedIn started in 2016 to create an open platform that can fit any 19-inch rack environment for servers, storage, and networking. In addition to LinkedIn, founding members include GE Digital, HPE, Flex, and Vapor IO. It now counts 27 corporate members and more than 2,200 community members. At least six companies including LinkedIn and Packet have deployed Open19 hardware. And since the public release of the Open19 Project Specifications in March, the foundation has seen more than 400 downloads.

Vapor IO is a founding member of LF Edge and Open19, and its CMO Matt Trifiro co-chaired the State of the Edge Report, and subsequent data at the edge topic-specific report.

“The beauty of Open19 is that the process of swapping out or installing a piece of hardware is literally like putting a drawer in a dresser,” Trifiro said. “It’s something you or I could do with 10 minutes of training. And the power of it as an open source standard is that all the suppliers of servers, storage, and networking hardware can put whatever they want inside that box — proprietary technology, Open Compute technology, whatever they want.”

Open source standards accelerate research and development across the entire industry and level the playing field for where companies can compete, Trifiro continued. But, he added, vendors still have to find a way to compete and differentiate their products and services — and not just take an open source project and sell a service package around it. “To compete in open source, you have to differentiate, and differentiate aggressively. But what it does is elevate the entire industry.”

The OpenStack Foundation started its Edge Computing Group in 2017. It followed up at the OpenStack Summit that same year with Verizon’s Beth Cohen introducing an OpenStack-at-the-edge use case. Some of the companies working with the OSF edge group include China Mobile, Cisco, Dell EMC, Ericsson, INRIA, Intel, Nokia, Red Hat, SUSE, Verizon, and Wind River.

Last year the edge group published a white paper, Cloud Edge Computing Beyond the Data Center, and launched an independent open source edge project called StarlingX. It’s a full project on its own, as opposed to an OpenStack sub-project, and one of four (in addition to OpenStack) under the OSF umbrella (the others are Kata Containers, Zuul, and Airship).

StarlingX is developing an integrated platform optimized for edge and IoT use cases that uses OpenStack in addition to Kubernetes, Ceph, and other open source tools, said Ildiko Vancsa, ecosystem technical lead at OSF.

Additionally, the edge group is working on reference architectures, and edge continued to be a hot topic at this year’s OSF Open Infrastructure Summit that took place last month.

Everyone’s trying to solve this massive problem — and opportunity — of edge computing. In other words, how to best put compute, storage, and networking close to end users and devices to enable new applications and technologies like 5G and NFV that need ultra-low latency and accelerated processing.

“History has shown that if you are trying to solve a really hard problem, especially with software, open source is the best way because so many people have the same problem,” said Mark Collier, chief operating officer for OSF. The smartest people don’t all work for the same company or even live in one country “so if you can draw from the expertise of people designing everything from a ship-style environment to cell towers, pushing the limits out in the real world, you’re going to bring together a larger collection of experiences.”

OSF, for example, has 100,000 members in 187 countries. “When you collaborate without boundaries, you tend to get better participation, better code,” Collier said.

The edge magnifies the value of open source and collaboration because it also amplifies the challenge of large-scale distributed systems and ensuring interoperability, Vancsa said.

“More collaboration happening in open source … is a great avenue forward to get closer to interoperability, walking hand in hand with standardization,” she added. This is why the OSF Edge Computing Group collaborates with other edge groups and standards organization like Open Edge Computing, LF Edge, and ETSI. The group is in discussions with ETSI’s MEC group about proof of concepts and testing environments, “whether we can share feedback through that channel, for example.”