Open Source: The Next Trillion-Dollar ROI Opportunity in Finance

The financial world is quietly undergoing one of its biggest transformations since the rise of digital banking. Once dominated by closed systems and a culture of risk aversion, the industry is now being rebuilt on something radically different: open collaboration.

According to Accenture’s 2025 trends report, open-source architecture will form the backbone of banking infrastructure by 2030.

This shift was on full display at the Open Source Finance Forum in New York, where global banks, technology leaders, and open-source communities gathered to discuss how open source should be built, governed, and secured.

Yet, this enthusiasm hides a problem. For years, companies have measured open-source ROI mainly through cost avoidance — "we saved on license fees." But that logic misses the point. It ignores the broader, strategic value open source provides, and the risks that come from undervaluing it.

Our Business Development Executive, Mario Stalder, attended the event and shared his firsthand perspective on this transformation:

Banks no longer see open source as just a way to cut costs. They see it as a core infrastructure, something that drives innovation, stability, and attracts top talent. The talks at the forum were focused on how to manage and grow it, not whether to use it.

This shift in mindset changes everything we knew about open source ROI before. To truly understand it, financial leaders must look beyond cost savings and consider its broader layers of impact.

A Smarter Way to Measure ROI

Traditional ROI metrics don’t capture the full picture. The true value of open source comes in three layers:

1. Consumption ROI – the baseline economic value gained from using open source.
2. Contribution ROI – the strategic advantage of actively contributing back.
3. Commercial ROI – the market’s validation of open-source-driven business models.

Let’s unpack each.

ROI of Open Source Consumption

The simplest, yet most overlooked, value of open source lies in its consumption. Companies build their entire operations on freely available software, often without realizing the scale of that dependency. Harvard Business School research, led by Linux Foundation economist Frank Nagle, put a number on it: $8.8 trillion. That’s what it would cost to replace all the open-source software currently in use worldwide.

To put it another way, if open source disappeared tomorrow, companies would spend 3.5 times more on software development than they do today. Yet, despite this, most organizations still see open source only as a way to save a few million dollars in license fees.

A FINOS Linux Foundation study found that 87% of financial firms agree open source creates business value, but only 18% can quantify savings above $1 million a year. This gap shows a dangerous blind spot. Financial firms rely on open source as if it were a public utility, but often fail to invest in maintaining it. That neglect shows up in practices like running End-of-Life software — 40% of large enterprises still use deprecated CentOS in production, according to Perforce’s 2025 report.

ROI of Open Source Contribution

Forward-looking financial institutions realize that consuming open source isn’t enough. The real advantage comes from contributing back by shaping the code they depend on.

The top reasons companies contribute to open source are strategic: influence over project direction (29%), reduced technical debt (28%), and talent retention (27%). Each of these directly impacts business outcomes.

For engineers, contributing publicly is a career asset. As Forbes put it, GitHub contributions act as “verifiable credentials.” For employers, encouraging this participation is a magnet for top talent — the kind that drives innovation in a hyper-competitive industry.

Still, nearly half of organizations hesitate due to concerns about unclear ROI or licensing risks. But that hesitation misreads the payoff. The return on contribution is about risk reduction, not direct revenue.

By investing in open-source software they rely on, firms can:

• Ensure faster patching of vulnerabilities
• Align software roadmaps with business needs
• Avoid maintaining costly internal forks

In short, contribution prevents outages, compliance fines, and technical debt.

ROI of Commercial Open Source

Finally, there’s the clearest validation of all: the market itself. Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) companies — those that build businesses around open-source projects — outperform traditional software firms across the board.

The 2025 State of Commercial Open Source Report (by the Linux Foundation, Serena Capital, and COSSA) shows:

• Median IPO valuation: $1.3 billion for COSS firms vs. $171 million for proprietary software firms.
• Median M&A valuation: $482 million vs. $34 million — a 7x to 14x premium.

COSS companies grow faster and raise funding earlier. Their Series A rounds close 20% faster, and Series B rounds close 34% faster than their peers. Investors see the inherent advantages — community-driven innovation, faster adoption, lower customer acquisition costs — and reward them accordingly.

Even more interesting, there’s a measurable link between community health and company value. Metrics like contributor diversity, GitHub activity, and the OpenSSF Criticality Score strongly correlate with valuation. The healthier the community, the stronger the business.

This insight gives financial firms a new tool for evaluating vendors. Instead of relying only on sales pitches, they can assess a vendor’s open-source ecosystem: contributor counts, release cadence, and project governance. Those indicators reveal whether a technology is robust, well-supported, and resistant to vendor lock-in — a concern cited by 33% of organizations.

The Financial Services Maturity Curve

Understanding open-source ROI is one thing. Putting it into practice is another. Across financial services, we see a maturity curve. Firms move from chaotic, one-off adoption of open source to something far more disciplined: a strategic, governed, and collaborative approach. Getting there means new organizational models, more cooperation across the industry, and a willingness to tackle risk and complexity head-on.

The clearest signal that a financial institution takes open source seriously? The creation of an Open Source Program Office (OSPO), acting as a bridge between engineering, legal, compliance, and the broader community.

According to the 2025 FINOS report, 64% of large financial institutions now have an OSPO or an equivalent function. OSPOs formalize what used to be ad hoc, turning open source from “a bunch of free tools” into a managed strategic asset.

Modern software is built on what the 2025 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis (OSSRA) report calls a “wobbly dependency tower.” Around 64% of open-source components used in commercial apps are transitive dependencies — code pulled in indirectly from other libraries. This creates a massive, often invisible, attack surface.

The same report found that 56% of audited applications have license conflicts. Unsurprisingly, legal and licensing issues remain one of the top barriers to open-source contribution, according to FINOS.

An effective OSPO tackles this head-on. By deploying Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools and generating Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs), it maps and manages these dependencies.

Shared Problems, Shared Solutions

Open source is also changing how financial institutions collaborate. For decades, banks have independently built and maintained systems for non-competitive tasks like regulatory reporting, data standardization, and market connectivity, often reinventing the wheel at enormous cost.

FINOS captures the absurdity of this duplication with one blunt question: “Why do we collectively spend so much money on so many things for so little differentiation?” The better alternative? Mutualizing risk and co-developing common solutions.

Open source provides a neutral framework for competitors to pool effort on shared infrastructure. That frees up engineers to focus on what differentiates their firm — customer experience, proprietary algorithms, or new financial products.

We can see this collaboration in action through initiatives like FDC3 (Financial Desktop Connectivity and Collaboration Consortium), which standardizes communication between financial apps, and the Common Domain Model (CDM), which defines a machine-readable standard for financial products and events. The FINOS report shows that 51% of respondents view such industry standards as where open-source collaboration adds the most value.

Accenture’s latest analysis goes further: it predicts banks will start treating regulatory reporting like shared infrastructure, building open “Wi-Fi standards for banking.” When new regulations roll out, the community can develop the tools once and share them across the sector.

Security, Skills, and Legacy Debt

Of course, maturity doesn’t come without challenges. Financial firms still face three big headwinds: security, talent shortages, and legacy tech debt.

1. Security risks are top of mind. The 2025 FINOS report found that 52% of financial organizations cite vulnerabilities as their biggest open-source concern. Each application may contain hundreds of open-source dependencies, making full visibility difficult. A software bill of materials (SBOM) – a list of components used in software – works as a key defense, but adoption lags. Only 43% of firms actively produce SBOMs, meaning most still lack the visibility they need to secure their supply chains.
2. Outdated software magnifies the problem. Enterprises running end-of-life (EOL) software like CentOS are nearly three times more likely to fail compliance audits. Ignoring lifecycle management doesn’t just risk downtime; it creates financial and reputational exposure.
3. The skills gap is widening. Even as open source becomes central to modern finance, the talent pipeline doesn't keep up. The Perforce report found that 47% of organizations managing Big Data platforms feel underprepared to operate them. 75% blame a lack of skilled personnel. Without the right expertise, many firms are stuck at the surface level, using open-source tools but not mastering them.

That’s where working with experienced open-source engineers makes all the difference. Their deep understanding of ecosystems, dependencies, and community standards helps institutions move beyond surface-level adoption to real mastery, turning open source from a risk to a long-term strategic advantage.

Building the Future of Open Source with Expert Engineers

Janea Systems is a global team of elite engineers with over 20 years at the center of the open-source ecosystem. We help the world build, sustain, and scale open-source technology that makes a difference.

Community Leadership and Revival

Janea Systems was chosen by Microsoft to revive PowerToys, transforming a legacy Windows utility into one of GitHub’s most active and beloved open-source projects. The team delivered over 30 modules, resolved thousands of issues, and integrated generative AI features.

Cross-Platform Enablement

Working with the PyTorch community, Janea Systems implemented future-proof AI workloads on Windows, cutting platform-specific issues by nearly 50%. Our contributions ensured that PyTorch performs consistently across platforms — a crucial step for scalable machine learning operations.

Innovation and Creation

Beyond contributions, Janea Systems also builds its own tools. Projects like JECQ, a high-performance vector search library, and Memurai, an enterprise-grade in-memory database derived from an open-source Redis port for Windows, show our commitment to practical innovation.

With this track record of both creation and contribution, Janea Systems stands at the forefront of global open-source engineering. We help financial institutions modernize their infrastructure, mature their open-source practices, and capture the full ROI of collaborative innovation.

Reach out today to learn how we can help you turn open source into a strategic advantage.