The Linux Foundation Projects
Skip to main content
search
All Posts By

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.

May 18

OpenChain Webinar #4: Unpacking SPDX 2.2 + SPDX Lite – Coming May 18th

By Featured

The OpenChain Project has launched a series of bi-weekly free webinars that provide access to people and knowledge that we would otherwise obtain at events. We hold our fourth meeting on Monday the 18h of May at 5pm Pacific with two guest speakers.

This time we are unpacking the newly released SPDX 2.2. SPDX, as a leading industry standard for Software Bill of Materials, plays a pivotal role in the implementation of practical manual and automated compliance programs.

Kate Stewart, Sr. Director of Strategic Programs at the Linux Foundation, will explain how SPDX 2.2 works and what it means for the community. Kate has been a key driver of this standard over the last 10 years and can answer all your questions about what the current standard means, what projects support it, and the current state of the tooling landscape.

Yoshiyuki Ito, Principal Expert at RENESAS Electronics, will provide an overview of SPDX Lite. This is a “Profile” for the SPDX 2.2 standard that helps companies deploy the Software Bill of Materials to match certain workflows, particularly with respect to suppliers to large companies using existing processes. Ito San and others in the OpenChain Japan Work Group created SDPX Lite to help ensure that the standard could seek adoption in as many production environments as possible with minimal friction.

Each talk will run for 10~15 minutes and there will be plenty of time for questions, comments and suggestions. As with all OpenChain Project activities, our goal is to facilitate knowledge-sharing between peers.

Everyone is invited to join this free webinar via zoom. It will also be recorded and made available later on our website.

Join Our Zoom Meeting

Password *

  • 123456

One Tap Telephone (no screensharing)

  • +358 9 4245 1488,,9990120120# Finland
  • +33 7 5678 4048,,9990120120# France
  • +49 69 7104 9922,,9990120120# Germany
  • +852 5808 6088,,9990120120# Hong Kong
  • +39 069 480 6488,,9990120120# Italy
  • +353 6 163 9031,,9990120120# Ireland
  • +81 524 564 439,,9990120120# Japan
  • +82 2 6105 4111,,9990120120# Korea
  • +34 917 873 431,,9990120120# Spain
  • +46 850 539 728,,9990120120# Sweden
  • +41 43 210 71 08,,9990120120# Switzerland
  • +44 330 088 5830,,9990120120# UK
  • +16699006833,,9990120120# US (San Jose)
  • +12532158782,,9990120120# US

Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/abeUqy3kYQ
Not all countries have available numbers.

After dialing the local number enter 9990120120#

May 12

OpenChain Webinar 3 – Presentation Slides

By Featured

OpenChain Webinar 3 was held on the First Monday of May 2020 and featured talks on contribution policies, M&A and due diligence.

View the Webinar

The speakers have made their slides available to the community. Please find the slides below in the order which they were presented.

Contribution Policies (Tobie @ UnlockOpen)

M&A (Leon and Tony at GTC Law)

Due Diligence (Andrew @ Orcro)

May 11

OpenChain Introduction @ NTIA Software Bill of Materials Framing Group

By Featured

The OpenChain Project was introduced by Shane Coughlan, General Manager at the latest NTIA Software Bill of Materials Framing Group meeting. The OpenChain industry standard provides a framework for companies to implement efficient compliance activities, including identification on ingest and export, using manual or automated approaches. Software bill of materials play a large part in optimizing this space, especially in the supply chain.

Watch the Presentation

Get Involved in the NTIA Discussion

May 07

Webinar: Contribution Policies + Open Source in M&A

By community, Featured, legal, licensing, News, standards, Webinar

In this webinar Tobie Langel spoke about ‘Open Source Contribution Policies That Don’t Suck.’ Leon Schwartz and Tony Decicco from GTC Law provided an overview of open source-related topics in the context of mergers, acquisitions, financings, investments, IPOs, divestitures, loans, customer license agreements, rep and warranty insurance and other transactions. Andrew Katz presented a due diligence questionnaire and sample warranties based on the the OpenChain specification.

More About This Webinar

Tobie Langel spoke about ‘Open Source Contribution Policies That Don’t Suck.’ In his own words: Open source contribution policies are long, boring, overlooked documents, that generally suck. They’re designed to protect the company at all costs. But in the process, end up hurting engineering productivity, and morale. Sometimes they even unknowingly put corporate IP at risk. But that’s not inevitable. It’s possible to write open source contribution policies that make engineers lives easier, boost morale and productivity, reduce attrition, and attract new talent. And it’s possible to do so while reducing the company’s IP risk, not increasing it.

Leon Schwartz and Tony Decicco from GTC Law provided an overview of open source-related topics in the context of mergers, acquisitions, financings, investments, IPOs, divestitures, loans, customer license agreements, rep and warranty insurance and other transactions. This covered:

  • Types of open source risk
  • Open source due diligence as part of transactions
  • Open source-related terms in agreements
  • The strategic use of open source in transactions

Andrew Katz presented a due diligence questionnaire and sample warranties based on the the OpenChain specification, and explained how adoption of this framework will drive further adoption of the standard. This builds on the observation that the OpenChain specification provides a great framework for due diligence and share purchase agreement warranties, even where the target is a software company which is not OpenChain compliant.

Check Out The Rest Of Our Webinars

This is OpenChain Webinar #3, released on 2020-05-07.

Apr 27

OpenChain Newsletter #36

By Monthly Newsletter, News

Newsletter – Issue 36 – April 2020

OpenChain in Q2 – Continuing Leadership, Continuing Support

The global lockdown due to the spread of COVID-19 is a unique historical moment. We are seeing both great success and great challenges in addressing this disease, and at all times there is an awareness that it can impact our close friends and families. To a large extent the OpenChain community is fortunate. Many of our companies allow us to work from home. Many of us are near excellent health services. We are well-positioned to weather this storm. We will do so with the health of our community and the societies in which we work as our highest priority.

Read more here:

OpenChain in Q2 – Continuing Leadership, Continuing Support

OpenChain @ Webinars:

  • Over the last three years the OpenChain Project has held bi-weekly calls on the First Monday (9am Pacific) and Third Monday (5pm Pacific) of each month. These calls have driven forward our standard for open source compliance and a large corpus of supportive reference material. Today we are at an inflection point and we have an opportunity to enhance our service to the global community.With less emphasis right now on editing our standard (the forthcoming ISO version is fully baked) and our reference material largely produced via local work teams, there is an opportunity to launch an on-going series of webinars that provide access to people and knowledge that we would otherwise obtain at events.

We kicked off on Monday the 6th of April at 9am Pacific with speakers covering Supply Chain Governance and Container Compliance.

Our second Webinar was held on the 20th of April and covered compliance in China and OpenChain at Facebook.

We also announced our third Webinar for the 4th of May covering Contribution Policies + OpenChain in M&A. Watch this space for the recording in the next issue.

OpenChain @ Translations

OpenChain Specification 2.0 Available In Russian

OpenChain @ Conformance

Siemens Announces OpenChain 2.0 Conformance

OpenChain @ Partners

OSS Engineering Consultants is an OpenChain Partner

Osborne Clarke is an OpenChain Partner

OpenChain @ Work Groups

OpenChain @ Events

Coming Next

  • This newsletter marks 36 months since we started a major outward push for awareness and adoption in the OpenChain Project. During this time we have seen our industry standard enter a multitude of new markets. You can expect this continue and you can expect initiatives like our webinars to grow over time. Our next newsletter will both provide a new look and a great way for people to get started with our activities. Watch this space.