An open letter
asking NHS England
to keep its code open
Code paid for with public money should be open to the public. This principle is enshrined in the UK Government Design Principles and the NHS Service Standard. It is now being walked back. We are signing this to restate the case.
236 signatures since 01 May 2026
Statement
We disagree with the NHS technical leadership’s decision to hide the source code of all of their repositories.
Making code open source requires more work than keeping it closed. That hard work is the point.
It requires a higher bar of quality. It requires processes to proactively find, fix, and monitor for vulnerabilities. It requires identifying risk, and putting barriers in place to contain any damage when things go wrong.
But it works like the human immune system: being exposed to threats hardens the attack surface.
Closed source allows that work to be skipped. It substitutes obscurity for depth, and obscurity buys you precious little when a sufficiently motivated attacker is involved.
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Signatures
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References
- NHS Goes To War Against Open Source
- NHS England rushes to hide software over AI hacking fears
- NHS Service Standard — Principle 12: Make new source code open
- NHS England quietly removes open source policy web pages (Digital Health)
- Don’t be afraid to code in the open: how to do it securely (GOV.UK)
- Does Mythos mean shutting down your open source repos? (shkspr.mobi)
- Discourse is not going closed source (Discourse)
