The OPC Foundation announced its OPC UA technology is now available as open-source software. “Open source is a very important strategy to eliminate roadblocks to adoption of the technology,” the foundation says. “By open sourcing the OPC UA technology, the OPC Foundation is now enabling easy access to it by academia and research organizations, as well as suppliers and end-users that would like to assess the technology as part of early adopter and feasibility analysis.”

A number of OPC open-source initiatives are already available from suppliers, research institutes and academia for OPC UA. The OPC Foundation open-source repository is intended to supplement these other open-source initiatives to provide additional value. Founded 1996, the OPC Foundation has facilitated the development and adoption of the OPC information exchange standards. As both advocate and custodian of these specifications, the foundation’s mission is to help industry vendors, end-users and software developers maintain interoperability for their manufacturing and automation assets.

The open-source repository of OPC UA is now available on the open source GitHub web site at http://github.com/opcfoundation.