In January this year, the Linux Foundation announced it would combine six major networking and telecoms projects under a common “horizontal umbrella” called the LF Network Fund (LFN). This is a bid to rationalize activities and reduce fragmentation and market confusion – and the resulting threat that operators will lack the confidence, despite the allure of open platforms, to tear themselves away from their familiar vendors, standards bodies and closed platforms. It will also help to reduce the variety of skills and resources telcos will need to support all the projects, and will charge a single fee to belong to LFN. The LFN will bring together six projects at various stages of maturity. They are: ONAP (Open Network Automation Protocol)…