For years, organisations that wanted to disrupt the closed market for mobile networks looked wistfully at the upheaval in the enterprise IT industry in the 1990s, when companies like Red Hat turned the ecosystem on its head. Open source platforms enabled a wave of innovation in applications, services and software delivery models. In the 2020s, there is a credible prospect that open platforms will take a strong position in mobile networks, and operators are keen to see the supply chain opened up to a wider range of suppliers and a broader innovation base. However, there is a significant difference between ‘open’ and ‘open source’, and there are many barriers to the latter becoming a dominant model in telecoms networks. Of…