Open Mainframe Project closed out its milestone 10th anniversary year with a strong presence at the GS UK Annual In-Person Conference, held November 3–6, 2025, at Whittlebury Hall in Northamptonshire. As one of the community’s most anticipated gatherings, GS UK once again offered a dedicated track for Open Mainframe — underscoring the continued momentum and maturing role of open-source tooling across the global mainframe landscape.
A Milestone Year for Open Mainframe Project
2025 marked the 10th anniversary of open collaboration under the Open Mainframe Project umbrella — a decade that saw open-source development move from an experimental corner of mainframe computing to a center-stage enabler of modernization, education, and enterprise transformation.
GS UK served as both a celebration and a forward-looking checkpoint:
- How far the community has come
- What innovations are now reaching production maturity
- And where the ecosystem is confidently heading next
Watch all of the videos from GS UK on the Open Mainframe Project YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8REpLGaY9QHBWxLJrmlQdTX5_jPeAJPJ
Check out the photo album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/196587664@N03/albums/72177720322328453
Conference Track Highlights
This year’s the sessions reflected a powerful mix of practical modernization guidance, student-forward education initiatives, and new automation capabilities. A few key sessions included:
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The Power of Mainframe Open Education
A strategic look at how Open Mainframe Project is lowering barriers for the next generation of mainframe engineers, enabling academic programs, and supporting enterprise onboarding. -
Zowe DevOps as Curriculum
Demonstrating how Zowe is now embedded directly into technical training pipelines to build hands-on, job-ready skills. -
Galasa Deployment Stories & Live Ops Learnings
Real-world rollout insights explored emerging test automation expectations and the future of continuous integration across z/OS environments. -
Modern Source Control, Git Integration & DevOps Pipelines
The mainframe modernization journey continues, with teams actively embracing CI/CD approaches, Git workflows, and REST API orchestration. -
Updates for the zopen Community
A closer look at expanding package management support for mainframe workloads, offering maintainers and developers streamlined build, update, and dependency options.
Collectively, the sessions portrayed an ecosystem in motion — evolving from foundational capabilities into full-stack modernization.
A Look Ahead
As 2025 comes to a close, the Open Mainframe Project’s participation at GS UK reflects more than community presence — it represents influence, maturity, and acceleration.
The next decade will build on:
- deeper academic partnerships
- more integrated open tooling
- broader enterprise modernization
- and a renewed, skilled workforce ready to steward critical infrastructure
Open source mainframe isn’t a niche initiative anymore. It is the foundation of how the platform evolves, adapts, and thrives.
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