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 took center stage during Toyota’s keynote at Open Source Summit Japan. Masato Endo explained how our community makes open source compliance more accessible, effective and cost efficient. He highlighted the significant progress made in building a vibrant Japanese Work Group and discussed how bridges are being made towards global participants in the open source ecosystem.
The OpenChain Project is delighted to announce the creation of a WeChat group to share news with the Chinese community. Everyone is invited to join and to contribute to our conversation. You can also use this group to find out about Chinese events and new materials released in Chinese. Spread the word!
The OpenChain Project will be featured at a workshop co-organized by our partner Software Compliance Academy and the experienced open source company KDAB in Berlin on the 14th and 15th June. This event will feature a morning keynote by Shane Coughlan at 10am on the 15th of June and provides a great starting point for organizations interested in adopting the key requirements of a quality open source program.
The OpenChain Project ran a well-attended workshop at the FOSS Backstage event in Berlin on the 14th of June. The workshop discussed the OpenChain standard, reference materials, and how projects like SPDX and Quartermaster fit together to offer practical solutions to modern compliance challenges.
The OpenChain Project was featured during the opening keynote of FOSS Backstage on the 14th of June. The keynote was delivered by Shane Coughlan, OpenChain Project Director, and was focused on the big picture of open source compliance and governance in 2018. It will soon be made available for streaming via the FOSS Backstage website.
The OpenChain Japan Work Group held its fourth formal meeting on the 13th of June at the Toyota Midland Square Facility in Nagoya. The meeting was attended by over 40 people representing 26 companies. It was focused on reviewing previously created case studies and developing new material. The outcomes of the event will be shared in Japanese and English in the coming weeks.
The OpenChain Project is proud to announce that Source Code Control (UK) and EACG (Germany) have joined our pilot partner program. These two organizations have a long history of providing open source consultancy or support to a wide range of companies in their respective markets. Their participation in our pilot partner program dramatically increases the footprint of official OpenChain-related service provides in the European sphere. This will provide more avenues for companies of all sizes to engage with OpenChain and it will also provide more feedback regarding how the partner program may evolve over time.
“The OpenChain Project is community-first,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain Project Director. “Any company of any size can engage with the OpenChain Project, access all our material under public domain, and conform to our specification using a free, simple online self-certification service. However, we also get a lot of requests for consultancy support, for conformance support and for training support. This is where our eco-system of partners come in. These providers deliver services related to OpenChain into their respective markets and help to build out our larger community. Our partner program is in pilot at the moment and is evolving hand-in-hand both with the entities providing OpenChain services and our larger community. Welcoming Source Code Control and EACG marks a milestone in building OpenChain support in the European Union.”
“OpenChain is instrumental to the service we deliver to our customers who are implementing strategies to manage their software supply chain,” says Martin Callinan, Founder of Source Code Control Limited. “It helps validate that the processes we create for customers can be independently validate. Our customers are able to transparently demonstrate OpenChain processes are part of their software quality assurance.”
“As a tool vendor we have our focus on many technical details such as efficiently and correctly scanning, matching or resolving,” saysJan Thielscher, Founder of EACG GmbH. “But the overall quality and consistency of a corporate-wide Open Source Governance can’t be provided through a tool only. It requires processes and cultural change along the complete software value chain. That’s why we very much appreciate and support the OpenChain efforts and extend our solution beyond the technical aspects to support all the carefully selected OpenChain requirements.”
The OpenChain Project is delighted to announce the immediate availability of three automotive case studies. These case studies are an anonymous output of the recent Legal and Licensing Workshop in Barcelona. They provide simple, clear and practical overviews of how large companies find OpenChain useful when addressing open source in their supply chain.
“The OpenChain Project has inspired companies to increasingly align behind proven, shared approaches to managing open source compliance,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain Project Director. “There are public aspect to our work, such as our calls and those companies who are publicly listed as conformant, but there are equal or greater private aspects. Dozens of companies are using our materials to review and improve processes related to compliance. These case studies provide a clear example of how OpenChain is being used in the real world.”
Get this guide and many more documents in the OpenChain Reference Library: https://github.com/OpenChain-Project/Reference-Material
The OpenChain Project is delighted to announce a redesigned website that makes it easier than ever to find information about conformance and reference material for companies of all sizes using open source.
“The OpenChain Project has received a terrific amount of contributions over the last year,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain Project Director. “This material is a direct reflection of how our community has found immediate value in sharing knowledge and of how the key practices of quality open source compliance programs are consistent across companies of all sizes and in all sectors. Our new website takes particular care to provide access to reference materials, training materials and case studies as quickly as possible.”
The OpenChain Project is delighted to announce the immediate availability of a case study from Sony. This contribution is part of the output of our excellent Japan Work Group and forms part of our expanding range of case studies in English and Japanese.
“There is tremendous value in sharing knowledge around open source compliance,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain Project Director. “I am both proud and inspired to note that exceptional work being done in Japan to ‘raise all boats’ and to ensure a wide and deep set of examples can be shared with entities of all sizes.”
This material is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 license. Normally contributions are released under CC-0 around the OpenChain Project. However, given that case studies are reports rather than contributions of processes, policies or reference material, and given requests from companies to ensure their stance is reflected accurately, we have decided to license the reports in a no derivative format.
Get the Case Study:
Get this guide and many more documents in the OpenChain Reference Library: https://github.com/OpenChain-Project/Reference-Material
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