October 29, 2020 – The OpenChain Project is delighted to welcome Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds as the latest law firm to join our global Partner Program. Their experience and support will be available to help support open source software user companies during the exciting period of the ISO/IEC JTC1 publication of our International Standard for open source license compliance.
“Law firms play a critical role in supporting companies using open source throughout the globe,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “Our collaboration with Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds is perfectly timed to support a key milestone in the OpenChain Project; the approval of our International Standard for publication via ISO/IEC JTC1. We look forward to a long, productive relationship with our latest partner in the months and years ahead.”
“We are thrilled to be a Linux Foundation OpenChain Partner,” says Giovanna Fessenden, Counsel at Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds. “While open source software is invaluable to software innovation, one of the challenges in software supply chains is ensuring that the open source license requirements for source code are met in a timely and effective manner. Widespread compliance with the OpenChain ISO standard will address these challenges. As adherence to the OpenChain ISO standard gains momentum in the software industry, I expect to see even more growth in investment in software innovation, as well as increased industry collaboration in the development of software technology. Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds values this unique opportunity to work with the Linux Foundation OpenChain Project to develop and share best practices for open source compliance. Our firm’s goal is to ultimately help build trust and legal certainty in the larger open source community.”
Mary Lou Wakimura, Principal at Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds, stated, “As an OpenChain Partner, we look forward to instilling best practices for open source compliance which dovetails with our services and advice to clients in the software technology space. We look forward to continuing the work of the Linux Foundation OpenChain Project in this important next stage of industry adoption of the OpenChain ISO standard.”
About Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds
Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds is an internationally renowned law firm devoted to the practice of intellectual property law. The firm specializes in patents, trademarks, intellectual property litigation, post-grant proceedings, copyrights, licensing, due diligence, opinions, trade secrets, open source license compliance and audits, and intellectual property counseling. The firm’s legal staff provides comprehensive intellectual property expertise in a wide range of technical areas such as biotechnology, chemistry, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, physics, optics, nanotechnology, and electrical, chemical and mechanical engineering. Visit hbsr.com for more information.
About OpenChain Project
OpenChain began when a group of open source compliance professionals met in a conference lounge and chatted about how so much duplicative, redundant open source license compliance work was being done inefficiently in the software supply chain simply. They realized that while each company did the same work behind the scenes in a different manner the output for downstream recipients could not realistically be relied on because there was no visibility into the process that generated the output.
The answer the early principles of this discussion arrived at was to standardize open source compliance, make it transparent and build trust across the ecosystem. The project began as outreach to the community with the idea of a new standard for open source license compliance with slides titled, “When Conformity is Innovative.” A growing community quickly recognized the value of this approach and contributed to the nascent collaboration soon named The OpenChain Project.
