We’re thrilled to announce an important evolution for our project: Serverless Workflow Specification is now Open Workflow Specification!

Why the Change?

When we started this journey, “Serverless Workflow” reflected our origins in the serverless computing ecosystem. However, as the project has matured and our community has grown, we’ve expanded far beyond serverless use cases. Today, the specification is used across diverse environments—from cloud-native applications to on-premises systems, from microservices orchestration to complex data pipelines.

The name “Serverless Workflow” was becoming a barrier. Many potential users and contributors assumed the specification was limited to serverless architectures, when in reality, it’s a vendor-neutral, platform-agnostic standard for workflow orchestration that works anywhere.

Open Workflow Specification better captures our true nature:

• Open: We’re an open-source, community-driven CNCF project
• Workflow: Workflow orchestration is what we do
• Specification: We define a standard DSL, not a specific implementation

What’s Changing?

Project Name & Branding

• New Name: Open Workflow Specification
• DSL Name: Open Workflow DSL (previously Serverless Workflow DSL)
• Community: The #open-workflow Slack channel (previously #serverless-workflow)
• Organization: We’ve secured the github.com/open-workflow-specification organization

What’s Staying the Same?

• Our Mission: Providing a vendor-neutral, platform-agnostic workflow orchestration standard
• The Specification: All technical aspects remain unchanged
• Your Workflows: No breaking changes to existing workflow definitions
• CNCF Membership: We remain a proud CNCF Sandbox project
• Community: Same amazing maintainers, contributors, and users
• GitHub URLs: Old links will continue to redirect (for now)

What This Means for You

If you’re using the specification:

• Your existing workflows continue to work without any changes
• Schema URLs and references remain functional
• SDKs will maintain backward compatibility

If you’re contributing:

• Join us on Slack at #open-workflow (the #serverless-workflow channel is being migrated)
• Update your bookmarks to our new GitHub organization (coming soon)
• New documentation and resources will use the updated name

Looking Forward

This rename marks an exciting milestone in our journey. By removing the “serverless” qualifier, we’re opening doors to new use cases, new contributors, and new adopters who may have previously overlooked us due to our name.

We remain committed to our core values:

• Vendor-neutral: No lock-in, works everywhere
• Community-driven: Your voice matters
• Platform-agnostic: Cloud, on-prem, hybrid—we support it all
• Simple yet powerful: Easy to learn, capable of handling complex workflows

Thank You

A huge thank you to our community for your continued support. This change wouldn’t be possible without the CNCF’s approval and the hard work of our maintainers and contributors.

We’re excited about this next chapter and look forward to growing the Open Workflow Specification community together!

Get Involved

• Join our Slack: #open-workflow on CNCF Slack
• Star us on GitHub: github.com/serverlessworkflow/specification
• Attend our weekly meetings: Community Calendar
• Contribute: Check out our Contributing Guide

Here’s to Open Workflow Specification! 🎉