The OpenChain Project has a global community of organizations working together to make open source compliance faster, easier and more effective. We have local work teams in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India and Germany, as well as international work teams covering automotive, reference tooling and education.
With physical meetings on pause due to COVID-19 we are providing enhanced support for remote meetings to our work teams, to organizations and to people who want to make use of remote conferencing. Our Zoom room provides you with video chat for up to 100 people, screen sharing and other features to run meetings, webinars and round tables. There is no cost and there are no restrictions to use as long as the topic is open source compliance.
You can book a meeting at the link below. Each meeting slot is 1 hour. Priority is for OpenChain meetings, so other compliance discussion bookings may be adjusted if there is overlap. We do not envision this happening often.
Please note: the organizer or host should schedule a meeting on our system and then invite their attendees separately. Our booking system is just for letting organizers know which slots are available. All meetings take place without passwords or entry codes. All meetings have video and audio recorded by our system for potential later review.
Over the last three years the OpenChain Project has held bi-weekly calls on the First Monday (9am Pacific) and Third Monday (5pm Pacific) of each month. These calls have driven forward our standard for open source compliance and a large corpus of supportive reference material. Today we are at an inflection point and we have an opportunity to enhance our service to the global community.
With less emphasis right now on editing our standard (the forthcoming ISO version is fully baked) and our reference material largely produced via local work teams, there is an opportunity to launch an on-going series of webinars that provide access to people and knowledge that we would otherwise obtain at events.
We kick off on Monday the 6th of April at 9am Pacific with two guest speakers.
Dr. Nikolay Harutyunyan will speak about ‘Corporate Open Source Governance of Software Supply Chains’, a talk based on recently published research constituting material from a literature review of 87 publications, a qualitative survey of 20 primary materials and 21 expert interviews at 15 companies. This bridged into a 2.5-year longitudinal study into a company that was just getting started with open source governance and following their evolution.
Armijn Hemel, MSc will speak about Docker container compliance. He has an extensive background as an internationally recognized expert in the field of GPL license compliance engineering with a particular focus on practical solutions to real-world product and service challenges. While best known for his work in embedded technology, Armijn has been exploring the topic of container compliance in recent years, and has been at the forefront of defining best practices in this space.
Each talk will run for 10~15 minutes and there will be plenty of time for questions, comments and suggestions. As with all OpenChain Project activities, our goal is to facilitate knowledge-sharing between peers.
Everyone is invited to join this free webinar via zoom. It will also be recorded and made available later on our website. Additionally, our Third Monday April webinar schedule will be announced soon. Watch this space.
The global lockdown due to the spread of COVID-19 is a unique historical moment. We are seeing both great success and great challenges in addressing this disease, and at all times there is an awareness that it can impact our close friends and families. To a large extent the OpenChain community is fortunate. Many of our companies allow us to work from home. Many of us are near excellent health services. We are well-positioned to weather this storm.
That said, COVID-19 has disrupted all of our supply chains and it has created a situation where face-to-face meetings have been completely supplemented by remote services. Different companies are at different stages in using such systems and we inevitably face a combination of adjusted priorities and delays in this situation. Open source license compliance is just one component among thousands as we collectively try to maintain services and to bring products to market in a changed world.
During Q1 our community has continued to function effectively. We launched our German Work Group. Our Asian work groups (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and India) either proceeded entirely remotely or deferred certain activities while continuing core work remotely. Our global automotive and reference tooling work groups continue to bring people together and – in the case of tooling – edge ever closer to describing fully-formed methods for companies to deploy open source tooling for open source compliance automation. Most importantly, our work in bringing OpenChain through the ISO process has continued, and we remain on track for deployment as an official ISO standard in 1H 2020.
Looking forward I would highlight three activities that can help drive us forward and address immediate market requirements.
We keep pushing our ISO work. This will be a critical development for assisting sales and procurement departments in their understanding, adoption and deployment of our industry standard.
We work to bridge the physical divide that our community faces due to the pandemic. To make this happen I am going to pivot our bi-weekly calls. With less emphasis on editing our standard (the forthcoming ISO version is fully baked) and our reference material largely produced via local work teams, there is an opportunity to launch an on-going series of webinars to provide access to people and knowledge that we would otherwise obtain at events. The timing schedule remains the same (first Monday, third Monday). Full announcement later today.
We seek to address the growing market demand for clarity on automation via our Reference Tooling Work Group. Today I am putting out a request to our tooling work group to accelerate activity around one or more turn-key reference implementations of open source tooling for open source compliance. I believe this will provide both the opportunity to guide more companies onto automation in compliance and – just as importantly – it will provide a clear understanding of gaps in existing tools. The latter point will allow us to provide “shopping lists” to activities like ACT, which is a funding umbrella for a growing number of open source tooling projects.
You fit into every part of this
Join our webinars as part of the audience or as presenters. Ask questions and provide answers. Bridge the knowledge gaps that we all benefit from closing.
Participate in our local work groups (virtually for now), helping to create reference material in multiple languages that takes companies forward in their desire to deploy the key requirements of quality open source compliance programs.
Take part in our global work groups (reference tooling, automotive, education) and help to tie together whole-sector understanding and responses.
Over the last 34 months we have redefined how open source compliance is approached. We have built an industry standard that is seeing accelerating adoption. We have produced over 400 documents of reference material to support this standard. Our educational material has become a new baseline for how companies approach the training of their staff. Above all, as a virtual-first community, we are positioned to provide a pillar that visibly, effectively guides the global expanse of companies adopting, developing and deploying open source in products and services.
OpenChain is an ambitious project that has experienced exceptional success in defining what constitutes a quality open source compliance program. We are equally successful in fostering exceptional local and global communities that redefine how organizations collaborate on shared solutions. In our space, and in the wider open source community, there has never been a better time to help reduce friction and help people work together.
The OpenChain Project defines the industry standard for open source compliance. It identifies the inflection points where a process, or a policy, or a training program should exist. At a high level, it takes the knowledge of thousands of people from hundreds of companies in this space, and it condenses it into clear, unambiguous definitions that any company in any market can adopt.
The OpenChain industry standard does not dictate the content of each process, policy or training program because it needs to be applicable to companies of all sizes in all markets. However, we have a super active and supportive community. There is reference material of all sorts – including entire reference training programs or multi-industry policy options – accessible via our website.
Indeed, the community of the OpenChain Project is our most valuable asset. We have local work groups in China, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. We have global mailing lists for the project as a whole, for automated tooling, for automotive. There is an incredible amount of energy and passion around collaboration in this space. We are all learning, and improving, due to this.
The OpenChain Japan Work Group holds a special place in my heart. It was our first local work group and it is our largest, most successful local community activity. People from so many companies and situations join together, share their thoughts, and collaborate to make things better. It captures the heart of open source. I hope that you can experience some of this during our 25 day advent calendar.
OpenChain Japan WGは私にとって特別なものです。我々OpenChainにとって初のローカルワークグループであり、かつ最も大きくかつ成功しているローカルコミュニティでもあります。多様な企業、異なる状況にあるメンバーが一緒に活動し、意見を交換しながらより良いものを目指して協力しています。これはオープンソースの精神そのものであると思います。このアドベントカレンダーの読者の方が25日間を通して我々の活動を体感していただければ嬉しく思います。
A legal assessor might be a lawyer or a special trained person who cares about licenses which apply to applications that include OSS and/or other third party software.
This epic describes briefly the role, responsibilities, tasks and how the software architect interacts with the toolchain in order to accomplish his tasks in an efficient way.
This epic describes briefly the role, responsibilities, tasks and how the software developer interacts with the toolchain in order to accomplish his tasks in an efficient way.
This epic describes briefly the role, responsibilities, tasks and how the compliance assistant interacts with the toolchain in order to accomplish his tasks in an efficient way.
A ECC expert (export control and customs) might be a lawyer or a special trained person in export control regulations who cares about all export control classifications for applications which are delivered that include OSS and/or other third party software.
The recent news regarding MOXA’s decision to become an OpenChain Platinum Member has spread through Chinese and Korean language media. Naturally these are very important geographic and linguistic areas for us. We hope these stories will be useful for our community in discussions inside companies, with other companies, and with the broader technology community.
The founders of AlektoMetis, Prof. Dr. Andreas Bärwald and Nicole Pappler have been closely connected to the OpenChain project for several years. After successfully creating and launching the OpenChain 3rd party certification during their time at the TÜV SÜD Group, they now continue to provide software centric consulting and assessment services with AlektoMetis.
“We are very happy to be a partner of the OpenChain project.” says Prof. Dr. Andreas Bärwald, CEO of AlektoMetis. “This will enable us to continue our longstanding successful partnership in our new professional home and to work with our customers and cooperation partners. Open Source related topics are of increasing importance for our customers. Considering that nowadays added value is implemented mainly by software, competence with respect to software becomes increasingly important to companies of all sizes and industries. Including open source licensed components allows companies to concentrate on the creation of value by their own intellectual property while relying on open source for standard tasks. This requires a suitable FOSS governance process in the companies. On the basis of OpenChain we can support our customers exactly here”.
“Building a trusted supply chain depends greatly on having trusted partners,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “We need to know that our fellow user companies have adopted or are adopting the key requirements of quality open source compliance programs. We need to know that there is reference material to help them in this process. Lastly, we need to know that there is strong support infrastructure to ensure they can get solid legal, professional and certification advice as needed. Nicole and Andreas have long had a substantial presence and contribution to the OpenChain Project on the latter point, and our new official partnership is another milestone in building out this international standard.”
“The OpenChain community is quite a welcoming and inspiring place and I’m really excited to be part of the OpenChain partner network, seeing it growing and looking for the time to come.” Says Nicole Pappler, AlektoMetis representative in the OpenChain project. “Both engineering, quality management and legal experts are working together to create guidance and clear criteria to enable the license compliant usage of and contribution to open source projects for every industry player, no matter what size and background. It will be my very pleasure to contribute to OpenChain to see the three pillars of OpenChain certification – self certification, independent compliance assessment and 3rd party certification – grow into a most useful policy in the supply and release chain.”
About AlektoMetis
AlektoMetis, founded in 2019, offers consulting and assessment services in the areas of functional safety, software quality and processes. The associated AlektoMetis Academy will offer extensive online and offline seminars starting in the second half of 2020. Nicole Pappler represents AlektoMetis in the open source working group of the German IT industry association Bitkom, where she is a member of the board. Furthermore AlektoMetis supports the German working group of the OpenChain project.
The OpenChain Specification 2.0, the latest version of our industry standard for open source compliance, is now available in French. This official translation provides a reference to assist with understanding and engagement throughout companies.
OpenChain 2.0 is the latest version of our standard and it is functionally identical the the forthcoming ISO standard. This means that any company that conforms with OpenChain 2.0 will also be conformant with the ISO standard on release.
Big Thanks To Our Local Contributors
Tristan FAURE
Bruno GRASSET
Benjamin JEAN
Laurent JOUBERT
Lionel LOUBET
Camille MOULIN
Harmonie VO VIET ANH
Special thanks to Camille, Tristan and Benjamin for finalizing this version.
The OpenChain Project Korea Work Group held its fifth meeting remotely on the 17th of March. A recording of Shane Coughlan’s opening speech is now available in English. While our project faces blanket disruptions to physical meetings, our community is using mailing lists, telephone conferences and other online collaboration tools to ensure we keep up momentum. Great thanks are due to everyone who is leading this effort!
