Linux Foundation Report Reveals Why Companies Fork Open Source Projects and Maintain Internal Patches
A recent Linux Foundation Research survey of 567 specialists examines how organizations handle modifications to open source components they depend on. The February report titled ROI for Open Source Software Contribution reveals that companies rarely leave external code untouched once it enters production systems.
Many teams add missing functionality, improve integration with internal systems, or accelerate security fixes that upstream maintainers cannot deliver on schedule. Some of these changes are contributed back, while others remain in long-lived private branches. The study focuses on practical patterns of contribution, forking, and the resulting security and maintenance challenges.
Survey Participants and Methodology
The research was conducted in October and November 2025 among subscribers, participants, and partner communities of the Linux Foundation. After validation, 567 respondents remained. Participants averaged 12 years of open source experience and 14 years in IT overall. Developers, engineers, and architects made up 28% of the sample, while 19% worked in systems administration and infrastructure.
Company sizes varied: 29% from organizations with fewer than 250 employees, 31% from mid-sized firms (250–4,999), and 40% from enterprises with 5,000 or more staff. Fifty-one percent represented IT vendors, 35% came from non-IT businesses, and 14% worked in government, non-profit, or educational institutions.
Contribution Patterns and Forking Practices
Seventy-two percent of organizations that use open source also contribute to it. Contributions extend beyond code to documentation, testing, user support, event organization, and project governance. Technical changes show clear business motivations: organizations most often fix components their products already rely on, yet a substantial share also implement new features.
Common working models include using components unchanged (68%), returning patches upstream (49%), maintaining internal forks (45%), hiring external specialists (28%), and participating in project governance (26%). Many organizations apply different strategies to different components.
Reasons for Internal Forks
Among 238 respondents who answered questions about forking, 54% cited development of proprietary features and 44% mentioned integration with internal systems. Security fixes and regulatory requirements were noted by 37%. Additional drivers included slow or abandoned upstream projects (34%), bug fixes (32%), faster release cycles (29%), quality and stability concerns (28%), performance optimization (25%), and license compatibility (18%).
The average organization maintains 86 internal forks, spending 60 hours on each per release cycle. Larger companies show significantly higher numbers: enterprises with 5,000+ employees average 136 forks and 11,152 total hours per cycle.
Security and Supply-Chain Implications
Internal forks create new vulnerability management challenges. A private security patch may leave the component appearing vulnerable in standard scanners if the public version number is retained. Conversely, a fork may miss subsequent upstream fixes. Proper tracking requires recording the exact upstream commit, the list of internal patches, and an owner responsible for synchronization.
The report also shows the largest gaps between business-critical technologies and actual contributions in programming languages and runtimes (53% critical vs 17% contributing), databases (56% vs 25%), and operating systems (59% vs 29%). Thirty-six percent of respondents reported frequent product delays due to missing features or fixes, rising to 54% among the largest organizations.
Active participation yields measurable benefits: 44% of contributors frequently secure desired features in project roadmaps, 55% receive faster responses on bugs and security issues, and 66% report accelerated product development. The study underscores that sustained engagement with upstream projects reduces long-term technical debt when internal branches would otherwise become permanent, untracked products.
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