The OpenChain Project was featured at the first Asian Legal Network meeting of 2018 in Tokyo on the 6th of April. This event provided an opportunity to unpack the latest news around compliance with an audience from over 10 companies. The event was sponsored by Open Invention Network and marked another chapter in the on-going collaboration between various international non-profit organizations and projects to support the growth and sustainability of open source.

Newsletter – Issue 11 – March 2018
Introduction
This month is all about the OpenChain Specification. We are approaching a new release and are seizing the opportunity for reaffirming the core text and goals of the project. At the same time we are seeing new interest and engagement from both technology stakeholders and those from further afield. Speaking of further afield, we just released some milestone curriculum material in Simplified Chinese under CC-0 licensing (effectively public domain). See below.
OpenChain Specification
The OpenChain Project has developed a specification that defines a core set of requirements that a quality FOSS compliance program is expected to satisfy. Although it represents a minimum set of “must have” requirements, a significant degree of flexibility is given on how an organization might implement them. OpenChain Conformance helps to reduce concerns about open source compliance in organizations of all types and sizes.
We update the specification periodically based on feedback from our community. At the moment we are in the home stretch before releasing version 1.2 in April. This release does not change the requirements of the specification but introduces improvements to language and definitions to make OpenChain Conformance and translations easier. We are seeking public comments as we wrap things up.
Everyone is invited to make their voice heard before we conclude public comments on the 15th of April. You can review the latest draft of the OpenChain Specification – and see what has changed on page 3 – by heading to this link:
https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/_media/openchain/openchainspec-1.2.markup.draft.pdf
If you want a “clean” version of the current draft you can get it here:
https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/_media/openchain/openchainspec-1.2.draft.pdf
We welcome any and all feedback from all parties. The easiest way to provide such feedback and to get involved in the conversation is to mail our Specification list:
Openchain-specification@lists.linuxfoundation.org
Feel a little out of your depth? You can get a better understanding of how the specification was developed and what its goals are right here:
https://www.openchainproject.org/specification-faq
OpenChain Conformance and Case Studies
There are several large entities currently undergoing OpenChain Conformance. We are working closely with these new and old community partners to assist and to learn. OpenChain Conformance is often a two-way process, involving listening to great feedback that helps us improve the OpenChain Specification or the OpenChain Conformance process itself.

One of the first announcements coming up, and our first case study, is being arranged with Code4Health, a project of the English National Health Service and National Health Service Digital. We expect to formally release the case study and announce their conformance by the end of this month. Meanwhile, Code4Health – the first program inside the NHS to conform – is already Tweeting:
OpenChain @ Events
We have completed some interesting event outreach during the early part of March. One of the most notable was a workshop held in partnership with the Open Culture Foundation (Taiwan) on the 5th of March, an event that fits neatly into our Asian outreach priorities. A few points became clear:
- Most attendees had a direct interest in using some or all of the OpenChain curriculum to support their compliance efforts.
- All attendees expressed interest having open source compliance collaboration between companies to encourage deeper open source use in companies.
- Most attendees faced various challenges in explaining this to the administrative side of their businesses.
One area of useful feedback was that some attendees asked for future events to be held in Hsichu or Neihu so that their colleagues can join. Some may be able to offer a meeting room at their offices. Our colleagues at the Open Culture Foundation are exploring the opportunities and may hold another workshop in April or May.
OpenChain Project held a governing board meeting, a face-t0-face and a standing room-only talk at the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Leadership Summit in Sonoma. This event was a great chance to reconnect with many of our core constituents and to personally engage with some potential new contributors.
For those of you who are new to the project, our governing board consists of representatives from our 14 Platinum Members, and it meets once every quarter to discuss strategy. Their input ties directly into the activities of our Specification, Conformance, Curriculum and Onboarding work teams, each of which was represented or discussed during our open session. The OpenChain talk was delivered by Shane Coughlan, OpenChain Project Director, to the general Leadership Summit audience. It was interesting to note the level of engagement and questions fielded by the audience. It highlights both the amount of interest there is around improving compliance and areas where we can usefully focus on developing new onboarding or reference material.
The OpenChain Project has some forthcoming events that may be of interest to our readers:
- In partnership with Moorcrofts in the UK the OpenChain Project announced details for an OpenChain session at a BCS event in London on the 22nd of March.
- Shane Coughlan, OpenChain Project Director, will deliver a keynote on OpenChain at Linaro Connect in Hong Kong on the 22nd March.
- The OpenChain Japan Work Group has announced that its third meeting will be held on the 19th of April at the Panasonic offices in Osaka.
- The OpenChain Project will be featured in talks and workshops at the Legal Network ‘Legal and Licensing Workshop’ held in Barcelona between the 18th and 20th of April.
Keep track of all our events here:
https://www.openchainproject.org/events
OpenChain Internationalization
The OpenChain Curriculum slides are now available in Simplified Chinese. This is a significant milestone in sharing useful open source compliance information with a key target demographic. Great thanks are due to Hung Chang and Navia Shen for initiating the OpenChain Simplified Chinese translator team, to Lucien Lin for creating this translation, and to Florence Ko for review.
Get the slides in PDF, PPTX and ODP formats here:
https://github.com/OpenChain-Project/Curriculum-Translation-zh-Hans
Coming next
The next month will be all about case studies, reference material and expanding the community of conformance. Not to mention the formal release of the OpenChain Specification 1.2. Stay tuned and feel free to join any of our work teams at any time. You insights always help make us better.
License and Trademarks
Copyright 2018 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.
Software Compliance Academy highlighted the OpenChain Project, curriculum, training and specification at an event hosted on the 22nd March by ZVEI. This event marks the first major workshop featuring OpenChain in Germany.
The ZVEI is one of the most important manufacturers’ associations in Germany. It is the regulatory and economic policy authority of the electrical and electronics industry and actively contribute to the further development of the economic and socio-political framework in Germany and Europe.
The Software Compliance Academy offers individually tailored in-house training programs as well as external seminars covering most recent software compliance trends and topics. It is one of the first OpenChain Pilot Partner Program participants and personnel from the organization have been involved with the OpenChain Project since its inception.
Newsletter – Issue 10 – February 2018
Introduction
The first two months of 2018 have been focused on building outreach in the China, Japan and Korea (CJK) region. We have established friendships and reached agreements to help spread the OpenChain Curriculum and broader OpenChain material to a wider audience. As part of this our localization efforts have continued at a rapid pace.
But that’s not all! OpenChain Project volunteers have been extremely busy prepare the version 1.2 update for the OpenChain Specification, we have seen background work to improve our free online conformance service, and our onboarding work team has entered a revision period for key documentation.
OpenChain Specification
The latest draft of the OpenChain Specification 1.2 can be accessed here:
https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/_media/openchain/openchainspec-1.2.draft.pdf
This draft will be finalized at the OpenChain Face-to-Face at the Open Source Leadership Summit in March (see below) and is expected to be released in April. While it contains no new requirements and represents a minor change to the specification, this revision offers substantially improved clarity and ease of translation.
OpenChain Onboarding
The Onboarding team is looking for final feedback or edits for two documents as we prepare to share material at the Open Source Leadership Summit:
- OpenChain General Handout:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tcXITiwFbUqK9JTEwz_JLJhtG9GRPyQa4cLdSULKn0I/edit?usp=sharing - OpenChain Checklist Handout:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LFx9mK0ZaZMLZzZ2mjlHAqgFdQNuYrCXVnFfmgFZdcU/edit?usp=sharing
OpenChain Conformance Web App
The OpenChain Conformance Web App has obtained various improvements to version control and – more recently – taken the first steps towards internationalization. Our goal is to release the web app in multiple languages from Q2 onwards.
OpenChain @ Events
The OpenChain Project has been fleshing out our 2018 event calendar with a series of announcements:
- The OpenChain Japan Work Group announced details for its second meeting on the 22nd of February.
- In partnership with the Open Culture Foundation (Taiwan) the OpenChain Project announced details of a Curriculum Workshop in Taipei on the 5th of March.
- The schedule of the next OpenChain Face-to-Face meeting has been announced for the 5th of March at the Open Source Leadership Summit in Sonoma.
- In partnership with Moorcrofts in the UK the OpenChain Project announced details for an OpenChain session at a BCS event in London on the 22nd of March.
- We have also been in the fortunate position of being able to outline further details of expected future activities in Taiwan and Mainland China. While some details are subject to change the key take-away is that we are seeing healthy progress towards deeper engagement in a key market area.
Keep track of all our events here:
https://www.openchainproject.org/events
OpenChain Accessibility
To support our recent expansion of workshops in the Far East we have had a strong of excellent announcements regarding localization resources.
- The OpenChain Curriculum, a slide deck that covers everything from “what is a license” through to open source developer guides, has been released in Traditional Chinese. This excellent development owes much thanks to Lucien Lin and Florence Ko of the Open Culture Foundation (Taiwan).
- An additional output of this process has be a published draft for the Simplified Chinese translation of the same material. This draft provides a foundation for our volunteers to work towards a complete release in the near future.
As always this material is available in editable formats on our GitHub in both Traditional and Simplified Chinese.
Coming next
In the next month you can expect announcements regarding the Specification version 1.2, new onboarding material, and feedback regarding our Curriculum. Moving into Q2 you can expect increased internationalization, further engagement in North America and Europe, and case studies or reference material to support adoption.
License and Trademarks
Copyright 2018 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.
Latest OpenChain Curriculum Draft in Simplified Chinese
San Francisco, United States, February 19, 2017 — The OpenChain Project is delighted to announce the draft OpenChain Curriculum in Simplified Chinese for Specification 1.1. This proposal draft is intended to help support our Simplified Chinese translation team. While it is not finalized yet, the document is based on the completed translation in Traditional Chinese, and it is intended reduce the amount of work required to reach a formal release.
You can obtain the draft files in PDF, PPTX or ODP formats on the relevant OpenChain GitHub repository. The OpenChain translations page has also been updated with these documents in PDF format.
As with all OpenChain Curriculum material, these documents are made available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC-0) license, and anyone can use, study, share and improve the work as they see fit.
Great thanks are due to Lucien Lin and Florence Ko for helping to build bridges in the CJK region that are so important to our long-term success. Our strategic goal is to engage open source users in the CJK area (China, Japan, Korea) and localization plays a central role in this process.
===
The OpenChain Project identifies key recommended processes for effective open source management. The 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.
Organizations of all sizes are invited to review the OpenChain Project, to complete our free Online Self-Certification Questionnaire, and to join our community of trust.
More Resources:
- The OpenChain GitHub repository: https://github.com/OpenChain-Project/Curriculum-Translation-zh-Hans
- The OpenChain Translations page: https://www.openchainproject.org/translations
Get this guide and many more documents in the OpenChain Reference Library: https://github.com/OpenChain-Project/Reference-Material
Latest OpenChain Curriculum in Traditional Chinese
San Francisco, United States, February 19, 2017 — The OpenChain Project is delighted to announce the OpenChain Curriculum in Traditional Chinese for Specification 1.1. This marks the release of our latest educational material for the Taiwanese and Hong Kong areas. You can obtain the final files in PDF, PPTX or ODP formats on the relevant OpenChain GitHub repository. The OpenChain translations page has also been updated with these documents in PDF format.
As with all OpenChain Curriculum material, these documents are made available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC-0) license, and anyone can use, study, share and improve the work as they see fit.
This marks a milestone for our objective to build bridges with more stakeholders in the Far East. Our strategic goal is to engage open source users in the CJK area (China, Japan, Korea). The OpenChain Project wishes to extend its deep thanks to Lucien Lin and Florence Ko for preparing and contributing this material.
===
The OpenChain Project identifies key recommended processes for effective open source management. The 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.
Organizations of all sizes are invited to review the OpenChain Project, to complete our free Online Self-Certification Questionnaire, and to join our community of trust.
More Resources:
- The OpenChain GitHub repository: https://github.com/OpenChain-Project/Curriculum-Translation-zh-Hant
- The OpenChain Translations page: https://www.openchainproject.org/translations
Get this guide and many more documents in the OpenChain Reference Library: https://github.com/OpenChain-Project/Reference-Material
Save the Date: OpenChain Curriculum Workshop in Taipei
Yokohama, Japan, February 17, 2017 — The OpenChain Project in partnership with the Open Culture Foundation (Taiwan) will hold a workshop between 13:30 and 16:00 on the afternoon of March 5th. This event will be held in Mandarin and is intended to provide an introduction to the OpenChain Curriculum (training material). All parties are welcome to attend.
“OpenChain is a truly international project,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain Project Director. “We are delighted to expand our activities into Taiwan and to build a great relationship with local community organizations as well as local businesses. This is a significant step towards bringing stakeholders in CJK closer together.”
本次的討論會主要是介紹OpenChain這個開源管理計畫,以及該計畫的產出「自由開源軟體授權管理訓練課程」。
議程
13:30 – 14:00 | 報到
14:00 – 15:00 | OpenChain計畫與訓練課程介紹
15:00 – 16:00 | 問題與討論
講者
◎ 林誠夏/開放文化基金會 法制顧問
林誠夏(Lucien C.H. Lin),知識背景為科技法律,05-16 年間任職於中央研究院從事公眾授權模式的研究,近年的研究成果包括:擔任自由開源軟體法律參考書台灣專章的編撰作者,並協助各界參與者,釐清 Open Source、Open Data,以及 CC 授權等智慧財產權及公眾授權應用問題。目前已轉任民間事務所,及於開放文化基金會擔任法制顧問,撥付工作之餘的心力營建國內開源授權知識的分享網絡 (Open Source Legal Network, Taiwan)。
詳細個人履歷請見:http://tw.linkedin.com/in/lucienchlin
相關資訊
本次討論會相關的資訊如下,歡迎您在討論會之前前往網站或是下載資料來瀏覽。
More Information:
Save the Date: OpenChain Japan Work Group Announces Second Meeting Details
Yokohama, Japan, February 15, 2017 — OpenChain Japan Work Group will hold its second meeting on the 22nd of February between 10am-12 noon Japan time at the Hitachi offices in Shinagawa. Details below in Japanese thanks to Imada San of Hitachi:
OpenChain Japan WG 第二回の会合のご案内を再送させていただきます。
日時:2月22日(木)10:00-12:00
場所:日立品川地区(JR品川イーストビル) 20階 Hall A
http://sasp.mapion.co.jp/b/hitachi/info/BA850354/?view=r
会場へは、JR品川駅の改札を出た広い通路を港南口方向にお進みください。
通路から直接ビルの入り口につながっております。(新幹線改札の近くです)
ロビーにガードマンが立っており、その左右にエレベーターホールがございます。
左側のエレベーターで20階までお越しください。(簡単な立て看板を用意する予定です)
当日ご参加予定の方で、参加のご連絡をまだいただいていない方がいらっしやいましたら、
ご連絡をいただけますと幸いです。<coughlan@linux.com>
The OpenChain Project identifies key recommended processes for effective open source management. The 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.
Organizations of all sizes are invited to review the OpenChain Project, to complete our free Online Self-Certification Questionnaire, and to join our community of trust.
Save the Date: OpenChain Project at the BCS Compliance Workshop in London
San Francisco, United States, February 13, 2017 — The OpenChain Project will be featured at an open source compliance workshop in London on the 22nd of March. This event is hosted by the BCS and the Open Source Hardware User Group. The speakers include Michael Jaeger, Alexios Zavras, Mirko Boehm and Armijn Hemel. The topics covered will include OpenChain, SW360, Quartermaster, SPDX and OSADL license compliance. All are welcome and there is no charge.
The OpenChain Project identifies key recommended processes for effective open source management. The 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.
Organizations of all sizes are invited to review the OpenChain Project, to complete our free Online Self-Certification Questionnaire, and to join our community of trust.
More Resources:
Save the Date: OpenChain Project Face-to-Face at the Leadership Summit
Yokohama, Japan, February 15, 2017 — The next OpenChain face-to-face will take place during the Open Source Leadership Summit in California in early March. This is our schedule for the Kenwood 1 room on Monday March 5th:
- OpenChain 8-10am Board Meeting
- OpenChain 10:15-10:45 Conformance Work Team discussion
- OpenChain 10:45-11:15 Curriculum Work Team discussion
- OpenChain 11:15-11:45 Onboarding Work Team discussion
- OpenChain 11:45-12:30 Specification Work Team discussion
The first session is for OpenChain Platinum Members only. Everyone is welcome to participate in the Work Team discussions from 10:15am. If you are interested in attending and you want more information, please reach out to Shane Coughlan, Project Director, at coughlan [at] linux.com.
More Resources:
- Venue:
https://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/open-source-leadership-summit-2018/ - Travel information:
https://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/open-source-leadership-summit-2018/attend/venue-travel/