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.
The OpenChain Project is delighted to announce that Panasonic is our latest Platinum Member company. We have been collaborating closely with Kato San and his team for a considerable period, and their work has been central to the extraordinary growth and activity of the OpenChain Japan Work Group. It is fitting that we are making this announcement at the tenth meeting of the Japan Work Group, just prior to Open Source Summit Japan, when community participants will have an opportunity to meet Kato San and his team at panels and workshops related to OpenChain.
“Panasonic operates across multiple key markets for technology. Consumer electronics, automotive and aviation all play a part in their deployment of software around the world,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “This is a natural next step in our partnership and it provides a significant boost to our goal of addressing critical markets like automotive and in providing open source compliance excellence to suppliers of all sizes.”
Recently the OpenChain Project has expanding rapidly with Platinum Member engagement from Cloud Companies (Facebook, Google, and Microsoft) and the Auto-Industry (Hitachi, Bosch and Uber). Adjacent to this the OpenChain Japan Work Group has also become very active. In this panel Fujitsu, Hitachi, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, and Toyota will share their experience of open source compliance and the latest activities of our local community.
In this panel Fujitsu, Hitachi, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, and Toyota will share their experience of open source compliance and the latest activities of our local community.
Bird&Bird hosted an Open Source Program seminar on the 25th June 2019 to explore the cutting edge in Open Source Program Offices in Europe and beyond. Attendees included representatives from leading national and international organizations, and all parties were active in exploring legal topics like “contributions” and “project leadership” alongside the processes needed to ensure corporate success in this field. The opening keynote was delivered by Amani Hajj Ali and Fabienne Haag from SAP, explaining how their company’s outbound process remains transparent and agile through the use of a standard like OpenChain. The event also covered open source tooling to compliance and other process management in business, a talk delivered by Dr. Michael C. Jaeger from Siemens, before proceeding into a group discussion focused on how OpenChain supports leadership position in open source management. The evening was concluded with open discussion over snacks and drinks.
The OpenChain Project is delighted to announce that HELLA Aglaia, a German company focused on the automotive space, is the latest OpenChain Specification 2.0 conformant company.
“HELLA Aglaia entered the OpenChain community via the OpenChain 1.2 conformance process earlier this year,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “We were delighted with a productive, efficient collaboration, and equally heartened with their decision to take a leadership position in the adoption of OpenChain 2.0, the version of our standard positioned for fast-track submission to ISO. OpenChain is gathering particular momentum in the automotive industry due to the initiative and pursuit of excellence of such companies. We are looking forward to building new bridges to an ever wider group of stakeholders.”
The OpenChain Japan Work Group will host its 10th meeting at Fujitsu Solution Square in Tokyo on the 16th of July. All parties local and foreign are welcome. This event will be held in English and Japanese and is a great way to get up-to-speed on activities in Asia.
Access to Fujitsu Solution Square
JR Keihin Tohoku Line, Tokyu Tamagawa Line, Tokyu Ikegami Line. Leave via the West Exit, then 6 minutes walk along side the JR Keihin Tohoku Line in the direction of Yokohama and Kawasaki
Address: 1-17-25 Shin-kamata, Ohta-ku, Tokyo 144-8588
Thanks to the hard work of our friendly contributors, Denis and Yegor, the OpenChain Specification 1.2 has an official translation in Russian. This translation joins our growing corpus of localization documents for our international community.
The OpenChain Project today welcomes BKL Law Firm as our first Korean participant in the Partner Program. This marks a significant milestone in building out a China, Japan, Korea (CJK) support network and is a complementary activity to the newly formed OpenChain Korean Work Group for user companies.
“Our firm is thrilled to be a partner of OpenChain,” says Jong Baek Park, Partner at BKL. “I believe that open source compliance through supply chain will be more improved and widespread thanks to OpenChain in coming years. We will do our best to contribute to the OpenChain community and help companies set up their compliance program to be OpenChain conformant.”
“The OpenChain Project has seen steady growth in the Asian region and recently we have formed an active Korea work group for user companies,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “Adjacent to this we are delighted to build out a support network for user companies that seek assistance around open source compliance issues. It is my pleasure to announce that our first legal partner in Korea is the BKL law firm and is spearheaded by Jongbaek Park, a long-term collaborator in the open source community and one of the key contributors to the Korean version of the OpenChain Specification. We look forward to continually expanding our user and our partner support network in the region.”
The OpenChain Project has active bi-weekly calls and a central mailing list that provide the “nuts and bolts” of our community activity. These are joined by various releases of documents and announcements of OpenChain-related events throughout each month. We collect key developments in this newsletter once a month.
This month we begin with another media article. Mark Gisi, Chair of the OpenChain Specification Work Team, was interviewed by CIOReview in their latest special edition, this time with a focus on open source code. You can read the interview online today and it will be available in print for July. This is a recommended read and a great starting point for people and organizations new to the OpenChain industry standard.
As they said: “A new standard gaining traction is the Linux Foundation’s OpenChain certification for Open Source license compliance and usage. This certification ensures that one can trust the open source from which software solutions are built. Influenced by customers seeking greater assurance for their supply chain’s increasing use of open source software, Wind River, a leading IoT Linux platform and solutions supplier, maintains OpenChain conformance for all its product lines.”
OpenChain @ Specification 2.0
OpenChain Specification 2.0 in Simplified Chinese
The OpenChain Specification 2.0 is now in Simplified Chinese thanks to the hard work of our volunteer community. Special thanks are due to Jerry Tan, Zhang Weilin, Po-Chun Wang, Lucien Lin and Florence Ko.
“The OpenChain Project is global and we are working hard to make our resources available in many languages,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “China, as a key market, is a priority for us. The availability of our latest specification in Simplified Chinese is the first step towards making self-certification simple and quick for companies in the region. It joins our Traditional Chinese translation as an example of our commitment to building effective bridges.”
The OpenChain Project is delighted to announced the immediate availability of a case study with Toyota explaining how Kaizen and Open Source spur innovation across the global supply chain. This case study is an exceptionally important milestone for our project, marking the beginning of a series of case studies explaining the “path to conformance” in OpenChain, and providing real-world snapshots of the journeys being undertaken by market leaders. We have worked together with Endo San from the Toyota IP team in crafting this case study and are indebted to his team for clear, concise insights into the decision-making process of one of the world’s largest car companies as it relates to open source technology.
The OpenChain Project announced the release of the Open Source Software License Compliance General Public Guide. This document is an outcome of the OpenChain Japan Work Group, one of the most active and vibrant parts of our project. The leaflet is intended to be a short, simple and clear guide for distribution to suppliers of all sizes. Our intention is to provide a solid foundation for understanding open source license compliance in an accessible manner.
This document is made available in English and Japanese. We hope to add further translations in the future. As with all OpenChain Project reference material, the guide is made available under CC-0 licensing (effectively public domain, and it may be used, studied, shared and improved in any way you want.
OpenChain Congratulates Wind River on being the first OpenChain Specification 2.0 Conformant Company
“We have been fortunate to work closely with Wind River from the genesis of this project through to our current status as a growing industry standard,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “Mark, our primary contact, has been a highly effective chair of our specification work team and our wider relationship with Wind River has seen a keen focus on ensuring a real world solution for real world challenges. Welcoming Wind River as the first OpenChain 2.0 Conformant organization is a natural and exciting expansion of our collaboration.”
OpenChain Welcomes Cognizant to the Community of Conformance
“It is tremendously exciting to welcome another open source user company into the heart of the OpenChain Project,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “Our mission is to support such companies both in pursuing internal excellent and in streamlining open source license compliance across their supply chain. The team at Cognizant is a pleasure to work with and I firmly believe we will accomplish great things in the coming months and years.”
OpenChain Welcomes Infosys to the Community of Conformance
“Infosys have always approached Open Source Software usage and compliance in a manner that takes the course of careful due diligence, and benchmarking our processes & procedures with globally acceptable industry standards,” says Shuvajit Mitra, Legal Affairs Counsel, Infosys. “To do this, we engaged with the Open Chain Project to assess our compliance practices in consonance with Open Chain Specification 2.0. To be in conformance with Open Chain Project, Infosys has implemented processes, practices and awareness to meet all requirements on OSS licensing and its implications while using and distributing OSS components bundled with Infosys software products, platforms and solutions which are the best in breed and which can be transparently demonstrated. Infosys thanks the Open Chain leadership in guiding Infosys through this process of assessment and authentication to achieve good governance as a best practice of software development.”
The OpenChain Project is delighted to welcome FOSSID (Sweden), Maggie Wang (China), CMS (Germany), JBB (Germany), Array Law (Italy) and BKL (Korea) to the OpenChain Partner Program. Our geographic coverage provides the option for access to support for OpenChain user companies on three continents.
Each of these events will consist of a Governing Board meeting, a Steering Committee meeting, and an open discussion adjacent to the main conference. All parties are welcome to attend the Steering Committee meeting and the open discussion. See the links above for more details about each specific event.
Copyright 2019 The Linux Foundation. This newsletter is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0). Please feel free to share it onwards! OpenChain is a trademark of The Linux Foundation. It may be used according to The Linux Foundation Trademark Policy and the OpenChain Terms of Use. All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.
The OpenChain Project was featured in two talks at the Korean Copyright Conference on the 27th of June. This event, hosted by the Korean Copyright Commission, ran adjacent to a Public Domain event, and in combination the local audience was provided with broad context regarding open approaches to sharing intellectual capital.
Masato Endo from Toyota and Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager, discussed a series of topics ranging from Open Source Software Supply Chain Management through to the growing corpus of reference material available for companies and their suppliers to get context for effective license management.
This event comes hot on the heels of our second OpenChain Korean Work Group meeting and solidifies our growing exposure to this dynamic, fast growing technology market. The third OpenChain Korea Work Group meeting is scheduled to be hosted by SK Telecom in September and will continue our advocacy and preparation work in advance of graduating from a de facto industry standard to a formal ISO standard in 1H 2020.
The OpenChain Project has released the first version of our regional overview slides for Japan. The downloadable version of these slides contain speaker notes. These are intended to help contextualize and explain our local activities.
