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.
On the 29th of October the OpenChain Steering Committee formally convened for a vote on the version of the OpenChain Specification entering the ISO standardization process. It was agreed to proceed with a document functionally identical to the existing OpenChain 2.0 specification, allowing a smooth transition from companies conformant today into conformance with the ISO standard due in 1H 2020.
View the Agenda Slides
Review the Written Minutes
During the OpenChain event at Open Source Summit Europe in Lyon we had an exciting presentation from PwC Germany. In a nutshell, this global auditing firm is a recent OpenChain partner, they have solid open source experience and they offer independent compliance assessments. Also, something we will be formally announcing with a case study shortly and continuing our tradition of leaks from the top, they offer global third-party audited certification. That’s a big deal because it marks our second-such deployment after our good friends at TUV SUD.
Check Out Their Slides
As we head into the weekend it is the perfect time to take a moment and review one of the most important documents in our reference library. There are two primary requests in the OpenChain Project regarding reference material. One is for reference training, something we have addressed through our comprehensive curriculum slides since the project formation. The second is for templates to create open source policies for organizations of different sizes and in different markets. Thanks to the tremendous work of Andrew Katz, his team at Moorcrofts, and the team at Orcro, the OpenChain Project has been able to offer a flexible template to address this need for over a year. Our first release focused on version 1.2 of the OpenChain standard. Our second release, formally coming to market very soon (but already in draft form for many months), is designed to explicitly support version 2.0 of the OpenChain standard. This is a critical release, as OpenChain 2.0 is going into the ISO process, and we expect it to spread globally in this form for many years. Please take a moment, take a look at our final release candidate for this document, and let us know what you think.
Get this guide and many more documents in the OpenChain Reference Library.
OpenChain Project is featured on the FOSSIDB blog today. They kindly made space for an informal, detailed dive into the project, what we are doing today, and why
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The OpenChain Project will be represented by Shane Coughlan, General Manager, during an Asian Legal Network event in Shanghai. The Asian Legal Network, sponsored by Open Invention Network, has helped connect people across China, India, Japan and Korea over the last eight years. The OpenChain Project has been present at meetings in recent years to discuss open source compliance, our industry standard, and collaboration across entities of all sizes.
We are delighted to release an overview slide deck for the OpenChain Project in the German language. It will be updated periodically. Please view, download and share freely. CC-0 as usual!
View the Deck
This is your chance to help finalize our ISO submission.
For those new to the specification – The OpenChain project has developed a specification that defines a core set of requirements that a trusted open source compliance program is expected to satisfy. To obtain a better understanding of the goals and the context in which the specification was developed before providing feedback, you can review the following FAQ list.
The big change over the current 2.0 version was reformatting the document layout into one acceptable for ISO submission and adoption. Other than very minor clarification edits, the content has largely remained unchanged. If a company is conformant with version 2.0 – they would remain conformant with 2.1.
The current draft is available at:
Past readers of the spec might find the marked up version useful:
Your Feedback is Welcome Via
There is a great deal of information being shared between individuals, companies and continents in the OpenChain Project. Here is a recent example: a presentation from Ueba San of Fujitsu at the recent OpenChain Workshop adjacent to OSS EU in Lyon.
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The OpenChain Japan Work Group pioneered a series of super quick case studies to help everyone get to know each other. We believe these can be useful for local Work Groups in every location and want to share a template that can be adapted. The content of this template is not editable because it refers to actual company processes, but the idea and layout can be copied freely.
View the Case Study
The OpenChain Project will be at CES 2020. This initiative is being lead by the OpenChain Japan Work Group. More news to follow soon!
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