cloudparts

Fintech Open Source Foundation

The Linux Foundation’s home for open source and open standards in financial services, backed by banks and asset managers, with projects such as FDC3, the Common Domain Model, Morphir and Goldman Sachs’s Legend.

1 projects in this catalogPart of the Linux Foundation1 incubatingWebsite

What it is

FINOS, the Fintech Open Source Foundation, is a directed fund of the non-profit Linux Foundation. It began in 2016 as the Symphony Software Foundation, set up by large investment banks to promote secure communications technology, was relaunched under its current name and broader remit on April 24, 2018, and on April 9, 2020 joined the Linux Foundation, which took over its operating assets and positioned it as the LF’s umbrella for financial services. In October 2026 it had 107 member organisations: 11 Platinum (Bank of America Securities, Citi, Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, NVIDIA, Royal Bank of Canada, TD and UBS), 25 Gold, among them Deutsche Bank, BlackRock, Google Cloud, Oracle and Red Hat, 44 Silver, including AWS, Docker and GitLab, and 27 associate members such as ISDA and the FIX Trading Community.

Its portfolio mixes software and standards for banks: desktop interoperability (FDC3), shared data and trade models (the Common Domain Model, Legend, Morphir), architecture tooling (Waltz, the Common Architecture Language Model), compliance and cloud-control catalogues, AI governance and the Symphony bot SDKs. The FINOS landscape in October 2026 listed 13 graduated projects, 28 incubating and 4 in labs, plus 9 special interest groups. Standards such as FDC3 and the Common Domain Model use the Community Specification License; most code is under Apache 2.0.

For someone choosing technology, the badge mostly signals who is behind a project and how far it has got. Projects must show a clear use case for financial services to be accepted at all, and the higher stages count adoption by financial firms: at least two for incubating, and at least five users, three of them financial, for graduated. Each project must display its stage as a badge at the top of its README. The lifecycle was rewritten in 2026 to align with the CNCF’s maturity model, with a new labs stage as the default entry point. A badge says little outside finance: Perspective, a streaming data-visualisation library once hosted by FINOS, has since moved to the OpenJS Foundation.

Its projects in this catalog

In depth

Who decides#

The Governing Board, drawn from member firms, runs the fund under a charter last revised in December 2024. Technical oversight belongs to the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC), which describes itself as the board’s technical arm. In October 2026 it had 12 members on two-year terms, some elected by the TOC and some by the board, from Capital One, Morgan Stanley, Citi, RBC, JPMorgan Chase, AWS, Revanite and an individual contributor; Peter Smulovics of Morgan Stanley chaired it. It meets every Wednesday in public for project presentations and holds private planning meetings on Tuesdays.

The TOC owns the lifecycle. FINOS staff accept new projects into labs; the TOC approves every move into incubating, graduated and archived, reviews graduated projects’ health every six months and resolves disputes over archiving. A graduated project that fails three health reviews in a row becomes eligible for archiving, and so does any project with no releases, commits, issues or mailing-list traffic for 180 days. Anyone can request that a project be archived; if the lead maintainer agrees or doesn’t answer within 14 days, the TOC formalises it.

Where it came from2016–2026

The Symphony Software Foundation was set up in 2016 as a 501(c)(6) non-profit by large global investment banks to promote secure communications technology in financial services,, with Gabriele Columbro as its first executive director.

On April 24, 2018, at NASDAQ in New York, it relaunched as FINOS, the Fintech Open Source Foundation, to support open-source collaboration across the industry rather than one platform; GitHub announced a partnership the same day. FDC3, a standard for desktop applications in trading to exchange context, arrived that month and graduated in July 2019. On April 9, 2020 the Linux Foundation announced that FINOS was joining it, with the LF acquiring its operating assets; FINOS then had more than 30 members.

Under the LF, banks contributed larger platforms. Goldman Sachs open-sourced Legend, its data modelling and governance platform, through FINOS in October 2020, and the Common Domain Model for trade processing entered incubation in February 2023 and later graduated. By October 2026 membership had grown to 107 organisations, and the TOC had rewritten the project lifecycle along CNCF lines, adding labs as the entry stage.

Why it’s built this way

From one vendor’s platform to the whole industry
The Symphony Software Foundation was tied to Symphony’s messaging platform; renaming it FINOS answered demand from its community for a home for open-source collaboration across financial services.
Count adoption by financial firms
The point of the foundation is shared infrastructure for banks, so the incubating and graduated stages require named users in financial services, not just contributors.
Standards under a specification licence
Data models and interoperability standards such as FDC3 and the Common Domain Model are meant to be implemented by many firms, so they use the Community Specification License rather than a software licence.

Timeline

  1. 2016

    Symphony Software Foundation set up by investment banks

  2. 2018

    Relaunched as FINOS on April 24; FDC3 contributed

  3. 2019

    FDC3 graduates in July

  4. 2020

    Joins the Linux Foundation on April 9; Goldman Sachs open-sources Legend through FINOS in October

  5. 2023

    Common Domain Model enters incubation in February

  6. 2026

    Lifecycle rewritten along CNCF lines with a labs entry stage; 107 members

Sources · facts checked 2026-10-28

Improve this page on GitHub