News

The OpenChain Project is delighted to announce the immediate availability of Japanese checklists to assist with open source compliance and OpenChain conformance. These checklists are part of the project’s curriculum material and provide a great starting point for addressing key requirements of quality open source compliance programs. As with all reference material produced by the OpenChain Project these checklists are available under CC-0 (effectively public domain) licensing terms.

Learn More:

• Get the basic compliance checklists in PDF format
• Get the OpenChain conformance checklist in PDF format

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 the immediate availability of onboarding material in Japanese. These documents are intended to help companies quickly understand the purpose and value of OpenChain, and to provide a clear way to participate through our extremely active Japan Work Group. The Work Group, formed last December, holds meetings bi-monthly. The last meeting had over 40 representatives from 26 companies gathering to share information about their experiences and best practices.

Learn More:

• Get a one page version of this document
• Get a two page version of this document

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.”

Learn More:

• Visit the OpenChain Partner Page
• Visit Source Code Control
• Visit EACG

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 The Slides:

• Download our automotive case studies in PDF format
• Download our automotive case studies in PowerPoint format
• Download our automotive case studies in OpenDocument format

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