Turn your project into shared infrastructure
Open sourcing code is easy. Building a lasting community around it, and keeping it legally and securely sound, is the hard part. That is what LF Energy is for.
The hard parts, handled
Open development has real operational requirements. LF Energy builds them in so your team can focus on the work, not the logistics.
- Legal and IP. License selection, contribution agreements, and regular dependency scans. Projects run under established IP frameworks that organizations evaluate once and adopt, with no bilateral redlines and no months of legal review.
- Security. The OpenSSF Best Practices framework, with funded audits for key projects and required annual reviews.
- Antitrust. Frameworks and training for safe collaboration among competitors and across vendor-customer lines.
- Infrastructure. CI/CD, project websites, governance templates, event support, and more.
- Marketing. A project logo and website, inclusion in LF Energy’s newsletter and social channels, and webinar and event opportunities to reach the organizations that adopt your project, with expanded support as projects grow.
What hosting unlocks
Beyond the operational backbone, a neutral home turns your initiative into shared infrastructure the industry builds on.
- Leverage on your investment. We connect your project to organizations looking for shared building blocks, driving contributions, adoption, and shared maintenance.
- Market shaping. Your tooling becomes the foundation others build on, so the ecosystem aligns around your architecture instead of competing alternatives.
- A vendor ecosystem. Vendors build commercial products on top, because their customers already trust the neutral foundation.
- Regulatory credibility. A project governed by a neutral foundation carries weight that code released on your own does not.
Utilities have already done this
The organizations that brought their projects here are the ones getting the most back.
Alliander and OpenSTEF
Alliander built OpenSTEF, a short-term forecasting toolkit, and contributed it to LF Energy for neutral governance. It now delivers operational forecasts at hundreds of locations across Alliander’s grid.
RTE and PowSyBl
PowSyBl came out of years of investment by RTE. TenneT later built its own transmission security solution on it, in five months, with no licensing costs. In TenneT’s words: “We benefit directly from years of investment by RTE and the broader LF Energy community.”
Hugo Pfister,
Manager Grid Security Applications, TenneT Netherlands
How it works
Bringing a project to LF Energy is a guided process, not a leap.
- Talk to us. Start a conversation. If a Special Interest Group covers your area, it can help validate fit.
- Prepare your proposal. Mission and scope, your initial contributors, and infrastructure needs, using our proposal template.
- Clear the legal and admin steps. Approve the Technical Charter, agree to transfer relevant trademarks to the Linux Foundation, pass a license scan with any critical issues remedied, and grant admin access to project tools.
- Present to the TAC. A short presentation to the Technical Advisory Council, which reviews and votes.
- Launch and grow. Onboard your governance, tooling (LFX, meetings), and marketing (logos, project site), then move through the lifecycle from Sandbox to Incubation to Graduated, with support at each stage.
LF Energy staff guide you through all of it.