Fintech News: Goldman Sachs To Make Modeling Software 'Alloy' Open Source

The Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS) announced Wednesday that it's Platinum member investment bank Goldman Sachs would make its visual modeling software "Alloy" open source. "Alloy" is based on a modeling language known as "PURE," which will also be open-sourced.

The announcement was made during the Open Source Strategy Forum in New York City.

"Open source technology is setting us on a path to greater collaboration and building mutual understanding," co-chief data officer at Goldman Sachs Neema Raphael said. "PURE and Alloy have grown to become critical tools within our firm across the trade lifecycle that help us price; assess and evaluate risk; clear transactions; and perform regulatory reporting. We've only scratched the surface though -- we'll unlock tremendous value for the industry when we co-develop and share models."

By making the software and language free to Wall Street, it can encourage greater system integration in the finance services industry, with FINOS director Gabriele Columbro saying it "will have far-reaching impact on the banking industry."

"Using Alloy, industry participants will be able to collaboratively build shared data models in a common language," Columbro added.

The Open Source Strategy Forum, according to the event's website, "is a one-day conference for experts across financial services, technology and open source to come together to deepen collaboration and drive innovation across the financial services industry in order to deliver better code faster." The event is organized by FINOS.

Other major financial companies that are members of FINOS include JP Morgan, Citi, UBS Group and Thomson Reuters.

Traditionally the financial services industry has been closed to open source, wanting to protect its software or code with patents. Open source means a company would give up its code for individuals to download, which they can either use or modify.

“There is a cultural shift that is happening, or needs to happen, in our organizations to understand there is business value to be had from open source,” Alejandra Villagra, the head of product development for Citi's Velocity platform said in 2018. For example, computer science experts and developers could download the open-source code and find bugs, which could help banks in their software development.

A major open-source event took place in October 2017, when Deutsche Bank announced that it would make 150,000 lines of its lauded Autobahn trading platform available to the public.

"By making this code publicly available, we aim to create a common industry that will deliver a faster and more convenient service to clients, strengthen controls and reduce costs," said Peter Wharton-Hood, Deutsche's Chief Operating Officer of the Corporate and Investment Bank.