Shane Coughlan

The OpenChain Project is excited to announce the availability of the OpenChain Specification version 1.2. This document presents a refined, easier to understand and easier to translate format. Our goal is to open our community to wider participation and adoption.

The following African proverb captures the essence of the OpenChain community effort:

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Version 1.2 is the result of the contributions of more than 150 people over the past three years. Congratulations and a big thanks to all those who contributed! Each and every contribution, whether or not it resulted in an addition, modification or debate, led to a better specification.

Learn More:

• Download a copy of the specification here: https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/_media/openchain/openchainspec-1.2.pdf
• Learn more about it here: https://www.openchainproject.org/spec
• Self-certify here: https://www.openchainproject.org/conformance

The OpenChain Project is delighted to welcome NodeWeaver as our latest organization with an OpenChain conformant program.

NodeWeaver is a zero-management hyperconverged infrastructure – that integrates storage, networking and virtualization in a single system. It is built using the same principles of large scale systems used by Google and Amazon, making them available to small and medium enterprises.

“With more than 80% of our code being open source, Open Source license compliance is an essential aspect for us” says Carlo Daffara, NodeWeaver’s CEO. “OpenChain helped us in making the process streamlined, repeatable and consistent, and substantially lowered our compliance cost while increasing visibility into all aspect of our production process.”

“The European sphere is vitally important for open source software,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain Project Direction. “It is a market with frequent explicit requests for open source throughout procurement and it contains an extremely vital community of small to medium enterprises. We are delighted to welcome NodeWeaver to our list of OpenChain Conformant organizations. This is both because of their long-history in open source and their unique position to support and influence many more companies across the continent.”

Learn More:

• NodeWeaver’s website

The OpenChain Project is delighted to welcome AB EHR as an organization with an OpenChain Conformant program. Their participation is especially valued as it ties into collaboration with NHS England, NHS Digital and other key stakeholders involved with open source in the British National Health System.

“We have been supporting Code4Health for a number of years to manage their open source supply chain. The OpenChain Specification has enabled us to validate the processes meet industry best practice and that the solutions being promoted to NHS are best of breed and this can be transparently demonstrated.” Martin Callinan, Director Source Code Control Ltd.

AB EHR’s participation is also the subject of our first case study. You can learn more about it here and you can also download the full case study in PDF format here.

“This is another important step to bring yet further assurance to the health and care system by evidencing good governance and best practice in the development and use of opensource solutions,” says Peter Coates, Head of Ecosystem Development, and leader of NHS Digital’s support of Code4Health.

“Community is at the heart of OpenChain as a project,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain Project Director. “This goes beyond the narrow confines of one industry segment or one market approach. It is about every entity that makes, uses or supports open source software. We are delighted to demonstrate this broad applicability in close partnership with organizations like AB EHR and Source Code Control.”

The OpenChain community of conformant organizations is growing across a wide range of stakeholders from all corners of software creation and use. You can follow the progress of our conformance program here and you can participate in our community here. Everyone, from organizations of all types, is very welcome.

The OpenChain Project is delighted to announce the release of our first case study, a collaboration with NHS England, NHS Digital and AB EHR. This case study offers an insight into how and why the British National Health Service has decided to use the OpenChain Specification as a baseline for effective compliance across its digital projects.

Our first case study is centered around adoption by the service provider AB EHR for the code4health project. This marks the first step in a broader deployment plan across multiple projects and providers in the coming months and years.

Get the full case study right here.

During the Legal and Licensing Workshop in Barcelona on the 18th of April there was a workshop with a focus on useful templates for open source compliance activities. One of the templates most commonly requested is related to case studies. After discussion among two teams and a total of fourteen people we produced a simple template for one page case studies:

This template – as with all templates and curriculum material – is licensed under CC-0 for use without restriction.

Download the template for your own use:

• Case Study Template in ODP format
• Case Study Template in PPTX format

Get this guide and many more documents in the OpenChain Reference Library: https://github.com/OpenChain-Project/Reference-Material

OpenChain has been featured in the latest issue of the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review. This publication is the first law journal dedicated to open source and is now in its ninth year of ongoing release.

The article is entitled ‘The Bid by OpenChain to Transform The Supply Chain’ and the abstract is below. At the end of this post you will find a link to the full article.
“OpenChain aims  to increase open source compliance in the supply chain. This issue, which many initially dismiss as a legal concern or as low priority, is inherently tied to ensuring that open source is as useful as possible with as little friction as possible. In a nutshell, because open source is about the use of third party code, compliance is the nexus of where equality of access, safety of use and reduction of risk can be found. OpenChain is built to increase trust between organizations to accomplish this.”

Read the full article:

• http://www.ifosslr.org/ifosslr/article/view/122/238

The OpenChain Project was featured in a workshop and a keynote speech at the recent Legal and Licensing Workshop in Barcelona. This event, hosted by the Legal Network, provides an annual forum for open source counsel and related experts to share knowledge and news.

This year the focus was on practical outcomes and the OpenChain workshop was no exception. The core goal was to provide a template for future case studies and to encourage our first submissions. Today you can see the template. The case studies will be along shortly.

In other news, during the event OpenChain received contributions of kanban templates, checklist templates and onboarding slides. Watch this space for social media releases in the near future.

The OpenChain Project in collaboration with Open Invention Network hosted a get-together in Korea. This was a small event centered around a meal in the city center. Our goal was to reach out to old friends at LG Electronics and to make new friends from LG Display. One of the primary outcomes was the decision to hold a full OpenChain workshop in the next three months. Haksung from the LG Electronics open source team kindly offered to assist with our planning regarding attendees and ideal timing.

Watch this space!

The Software Compliance Academy (one of the OpenChain Pilot Partner Program participants) ran a workshop in Germany on the 9th of April to discuss compliance. Naturally OpenChain was featured high on the list regarding approaches to frame effective, efficient compliance management.

More information in German:
“Die Verwendung von Free and Open Source Software wirft eine Reihe von rechtlichen Fragestellungen auf. Welche Vorteile bietet das Open Source Lizenzmodell? Und welche Lizenzpflichten sind dabei zu beachten? Einen vertieften Einblick in die unterschiedlichen Open Source Lizenzen und insbesondere die jeweils zu beachtenden Lizenzpflichten sowie damit einhergehende Kompatibilitätsfragen gibt das gemeinsam mit Vogel Business Media ausgerichtete FOSS Compliance Seminar in Würzburg am 9. April 2018.”

Learn More:

• Visit the event website

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.