Open Workflow Specification is a vendor-neutral, open-source specification and ecosystem for describing workflows. The CNCF project page describes its core as a standards-based domain-specific language, supported by open-source developer tools and runtimes. The project was long known as Serverless Workflow, a name that still appears in its repository and project description. It is positioned as a neutral alternative to proprietary cloud workflow services such as AWS Step Functions.
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation accepted the project at the Sandbox maturity level in July 2020, and the CNCF is part of the Linux Foundation. The specification is published under the Apache 2.0 licence and is developed by a community rather than by one company. Because it is an open specification, organisations can run compatible runtimes on their own infrastructure, and using it requires no contract or data flow with a single vendor. Governance, however, sits within the CNCF and Linux Foundation structure, which are US-based organisations.