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Shane Coughlan

Shane Coughlan is an expert in communication, security and business development. His professional accomplishments include spearheading the licensing team that elevated Open Invention Network into the largest patent non-aggression community in history, establishing the leading professional network of Open Source legal experts and aligning stakeholders to launch both the first law journal and the first law book dedicated to Open Source. Shane has extensive knowledge of Open Source governance, internal process development, supply chain management and community building. His experience includes engagement with the enterprise, embedded, mobile and automotive industries.

OpenChain Supplier Leaflet in Vietnamese – RC1

By News

The OpenChain Project is delighted to announce the immediate availability of our supplier education leaflet in Vietnamese. This translation has been spearheaded by Le Tien of Toshiba Vietnam.

This is a final Release Candidate and we are seeking peer review. You can assist by visiting us on Github (see below). However, the document is substantially complete and is available under our usual CC-0 license, effectively public domain.

Get these guides and many more in the OpenChain Reference Library.

PwC Germany and OpenChain Announce Third Party Certification Case Study

By News

OpenChain Project is delighted to announce a case study in collaboration with PwC Germany. It explains how PwC OpenChain certification works globally. Check it out to understand how our industry standard is supported by a range of providers and venders. 

“I am very happy to be working with the OpenChain project, as building trust is in our DNA at PwC, and the OpenChain project provides the right framework to foster trust in Open Source Software within companies and their supply chains.” says Marcel Scholze, Head of Open Source Software services at PwC Germany. “An attestation of companies’ OSS management systems reduces efforts and provides trust and confidence in the software development supply chain on both sides, buyers’ and vendors’. This is the way forward for companies using and developing software with OSS.”

“OpenChain is a project created by user companies for the benefit of user companies,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “Our collaboration with service providers like PwC Germany is based on feedback from the market. As the OpenChain industry standard becomes widely adopted we see a desire for support infrastructure to assist with conformance, health checks and process optimization. We are delighted to work with PwC on this topic.”

About PwC

The common purpose of PwC is to build trust in society and solve important problems. With a network of firms in 157 countries, more than 276,000 people are committed to providing high-value sector-specific services in the fields of Auditing, Tax- and Business Consulting.

For more details on PwC’s OSS services, please refer to www.pwc.de/en/opensource

The brand name, PwC, refers to the PwC network and/ or to one or several of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Further details under www.pwc.com/structure.

About the OpenChain Project

The OpenChain Project builds trust in open source by making open source license compliance simpler and more consistent. The OpenChain Specification defines a core set of requirements every quality compliance program must satisfy. The OpenChain Curriculum provides the educational foundation for open source processes and solutions, whilst meeting a key requirement of the OpenChain Specification. OpenChain Conformance allows organizations to display their adherence to these requirements. The result is that open source license compliance becomes more predictable, understandable and efficient for participants of the software supply chain.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and industry adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. 

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contacts

Marcel Scholze
www.pwc.de/en/opensource
+49 151 16157049
marcel.scholze@pwc.com

Shane Coughlan
+818040358083
coughlan@linux.com

Review the Case Study

Uber Announces OpenChain Conformance

By News

TOKYO, DECEMBER 17 – Today Uber, a Platinum Member of the OpenChain Project, announces their conformance to the OpenChain Specification. This builds on their long-standing engagement and commitment to the project and a deep engagement with developing our industry standard, accompanying reference material, and our evolution into a formal ISO standard.

The OpenChain Project establishes trust in the open source from which software solutions are built. It accomplishes this by making open source license compliance simpler and more consistent. The OpenChain Specification defines inflection points in business workflows where a compliance process, policy or training should exist to minimize the potential for errors and maximize the efficiency of bringing solutions to market. The companies involved in the OpenChain community number in the hundreds. The OpenChain Specification is being prepared for submission to ISO and evolution from a growing de facto standard into a formal standard.

“Consistent and transparent compliance standards are critical for building trust among the open source community and our business partners,” said Matthew Kuipers, Senior Counsel, Uber. “ We’re increasing our commitment to the community and our partnerships by adopting the Linux Foundation’s OpenChain Specification.” 

“Our collaboration with Uber began as the OpenChain Project scaled as an industry standard,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “Their engagement in our formative growth period provided valuable insight into how next-generation services companies operate today and where they are going tomorrow. Matt and his team have been a pivotal part of our evolution towards becoming an ISO standard and their commitment to excellence has raised the bar for great community engagement globally. We are looking forward to next steps together, particularly in fostering further adoption in areas where agile companies are establishing new markets.”

About Uber

Our mission is to ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion.

We revolutionized personal mobility with Ridesharing, and we are leveraging our platform to redefine the massive meal delivery and logistics industries.

We are a technology platform that uses a global network, leading technology, operational excellence and product expertise to power movement from point A to point B. We develop and operate proprietary technology applications supporting a variety of offerings on our platform. We connect consumers with providers of ride services, restaurants and food delivery services, public transportation networks, e-bikes, e-scooters and other personal mobility options. We use this same network, technology, operational excellence and product expertise to connect shippers with carriers in the freight industry. We are developing technologies to provide autonomous driving vehicle solutions to consumers, networks of vertical take-off and landing vehicles and new solutions to solve everyday problems.

About the OpenChain Project

The OpenChain Project builds trust in open source by making open source license compliance simpler and more consistent. The OpenChain Specification defines a core set of requirements every quality compliance program must satisfy. The OpenChain Curriculum provides the educational foundation for open source processes and solutions, whilst meeting a key requirement of the OpenChain Specification. OpenChain Conformance allows organizations to display their adherence to these requirements. The result is that open source license compliance becomes more predictable, understandable and efficient for participants of the software supply chain.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and industry adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. 

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contacts

Shane Coughlan
+818040358083
coughlan@linux.com

Microsoft Open Source Blog: Microsoft announces OpenChain 2.0 conformance for open source

By News

David Rudin over at Microsoft has written a great blog post unpacking how and why OpenChain Conformance was important to his company. Check out some highlights below and do take a moment to read the full post over at Microsoft’s official Open Source Blog.

Trust is key to open source. Developers should be able to trust users to respect their licensing choices. And when you receive software, you should be able to trust that the open source licenses were followed. The OpenChain Project plays an important role in building trust by setting standards that define how to operate a high-quality open source compliance program. It means that when you receive open source from a company that follows the OpenChain standard, you can be assured that the code went through a rigorous license compliance process. You can trust it.

At Microsoft we’re continually working with the community to help build and enhance trust in open source. When we first started working with OpenChain, our goal was to help develop a specification that could meet the compliance needs of the entire open source community – from the single developer to the largest enterprise. And today we’re happy to announce that Microsoft is now OpenChain 2.0 conformant.

Read The Full Blog Post

OpenChain Volunteers: You Now Have Business Cards and Lanyards

By News

The OpenChain Project is delighted to announce that we have official business cards and lanyards for our contributors around the world to use at events. We are releasing these today so that our vibrant community can proudly identify with our project while sharing leaflets, hosting booths and attending broader open source conferences.

Get these documents and many more in the OpenChain Reference Library.

Q&A

Can you send me printed copies?

Perhaps. We are doing limited print runs. These business cards and badges are really designed for local printing to allow maximum efficiency.

Can I remix?

Sure, but please run the remix by our general manager for approval at scoughlan@linuxfoundation.org

The OpenChain Project Announces Microsoft OpenChain Conformance

By News
Microsoft

SAN FRANCISCO, DECEMBER 12 – Today, the OpenChain Project announced Microsoft, a Platinum Member, is the latest company to achieve OpenChain conformance.  This milestone is an example of how OpenChain can be an important part of building quality open source compliance programs that meet the needs of companies and that build trust in the ecosystem. 

The OpenChain Project establishes trust in the open source from which software solutions are built. It accomplishes this by making open source license compliance simpler and more consistent. The OpenChain Specification defines inflection points in business workflows where a compliance process, policy or training should exist to minimize the potential for errors and maximize the efficiency of bringing solutions to market. The companies involved in the OpenChain community number in the hundreds. The OpenChain Specification is being prepared for submission to ISO and evolution from a growing de facto standard into a formal standard.

“Open source compliance is a top priority for Microsoft and we respect the license choices developers make”, said David Rudin, Assistant General Counsel, Microsoft. “We value our partnership with OpenChain to help build trust in the larger open source community. Through investments in open source policy, tools to identify open source software, and collaboration with the open source community in projects like OpenChain, the TODO Group, and ClearlyDefined, we are committed to working with the community to develop and share best practices for open source compliance.”

“Microsoft has been an exceptional contributor to the OpenChain Project both in terms of board engagement and in broader engagement with our work teams around the world,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “One of the defining aspects of the OpenChain industry standard is our broad applicability to companies of all sizes and in all sectors. It has been fantastic to work with Microsoft to understand the needs of the cloud and large enterprises, especially with regards to how some approaches differ to consumer electronic, infrastructure and other markets. The conformance announcement today is a milestone that greatly supports our evolution as we head into 2020 and underlines once again the value of our continued collaboration.”

About the OpenChain Project

The OpenChain Project builds trust in open source by making open source license compliance simpler and more consistent. The OpenChain Specification defines a core set of requirements every quality compliance program must satisfy. The OpenChain Curriculum provides the educational foundation for open source processes and solutions, whilst meeting a key requirement of the OpenChain Specification. OpenChain Conformance allows organizations to display their adherence to these requirements. The result is that open source license compliance becomes more predictable, understandable and efficient for participants of the software supply chain.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and industry adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contacts

Shane Coughlan
+818040358083
coughlan@linux.com

OpenChain Reference Training Slides for OpenChain 2.0 – Traditional Chinese

By News

The OpenChain Reference Training Slides for OpenChain 2.0 are now available in Traditional Chinese.

Big thanks are due to Andrew Katz and his teams at Moorcrofts and Orcro for preparing this material. As with all OpenChain reference material these slides are available under CC-O licensing, effectively public domain.

Get the Slides

Contribute via Github

OpenChain China Work Group – Meeting # 2 – Baidu – 12th December

By News

The second meeting of the OpenChain China Work Group is underway right now at the Baidu offices in Beijing. This event, kindly hosted and supported by our friends from companies like Baidu, Huawei and JD.com, provides a great opportunity to share notes and make plans ahead of 2020!

As you can see there are plenty of smiles alongside more serious discussions. It is also worth noting the gender balance in the room. Thank you China WG for leading the way!

Open Source Policy Template 2.0 in Chinese (Traditional) and English

By News

Thanks to the tremendous work of Andrew Katz, his team at Moorcrofts, and the team at Orcro, the OpenChain Project offers an open source policy template to support our industry standard. This is a frequently requested aspect of our reference material and – as with all OpenChain reference material – it is available under CC-0 licensing, effectively public domain.

Get the Template in Traditional Chinese

Get the Template in English

Help Us Translate

You can help support our internationalization efforts via Github. Get these guides and many more documents in the OpenChain Reference Library. You can find out more and discuss this template on our mailing list.