The O-RAN Alliance has joined forces with the Linux Foundation to form the O-RAN Software Community (O-RAN SC).

The O-RAN SC is aimed at providing open software aligned with the O-RAN Alliance’s open architecture. As a new open source community under the Linux Foundation, the O-RAN SC is sponsored by the O-RAN Alliance. They plan to together work on open source software enabling modular, open, intelligent, efficient, and agile disaggregated radio access networks.

The initial set of software projects may include: near-real-time RAN intelligent controller (nRT RIC), non-real-time RAN intelligent controller (NRT RIC), cloudification and virtualization platforms, open central unit (O-CU), open distributed unit (O-DU), and a test and integration effort to provide a working reference implementation.

Working with other adjacent open source networking communities, the O-RAN SC will enable collaborative development across the full operator network stack.