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OpenChain Newsletter #27

By 2019-07-27January 31st, 2023Monthly Newsletter, News

Newsletter – Issue 27 – July 2019


We are delighted to announce that Panasonic is our latest Platinum Member company. We have been collaborating closely with Kato San and his team for a considerable period, and their work has been central to the extraordinary growth and activity of the OpenChain Japan Work Group. It is fitting that we are making this announcement at the tenth meeting of the Japan Work Group, just prior to Open Source Summit Japan, when community participants will have an opportunity to meet Kato San and his team at panels and workshops related to OpenChain.

“Panasonic operates across multiple key markets for technology. Consumer electronics, automotive and aviation all play a part in their deployment of software around the world,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “This is a natural next step in our partnership and it provides a significant boost to our goal of addressing critical markets like automotive and in providing open source compliance excellence to suppliers of all sizes.”

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OpenChain @ Conformance

The OpenChain Project is delighted to announce that HELLA Aglaia, a German company focused on the automotive space, is the latest OpenChain Specification 2.0 conformant company.

“HELLA Aglaia entered the OpenChain community via the OpenChain 1.2 conformance process earlier this year,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “We were delighted with a productive, efficient collaboration, and equally heartened with their decision to take a leadership position in the adoption of OpenChain 2.0, the version of our standard positioned for fast-track submission to ISO. OpenChain is gathering particular momentum in the automotive industry due to the initiative and pursuit of excellence of such companies. We are looking forward to building new bridges to an ever wider group of stakeholders.”

OpenChain @ Specification 1.2

Thanks to the hard work of our friendly contributors, Denis and Yegor, the OpenChain Specification 1.2 has an official translation in Russian. This translation joins our growing corpus of localisation documents for our international community.

OpenChain @ Events

OpenChain Steering Committee Meeting @ OSS Japan on 19th July

The OpenChain Project hosted a Steering Committee meeting on the 19th of July as part of a wider OpenChain Workshop. This Steering Committee meeting provided an opportunity to review and raise comments around the ISO draft of our Specification. No votes were taken at this meeting, with the focus primarily on ensuring people had a chance to review the document, and with the discussion moving onto our mailing lists subsequently for more formal review.

OpenChain Japan Education Sub-Group Meeting @ Hitachi 9th July

The Education sup group is working on additional material for our reference library. The following material is being edited:

OpenChain Automotive Work Group – A Global Solution for a Global Market

The OpenChain Project launched a global Automotive Work Group. This work group already has over 80 participants from major automotive companies and supplier companies from silicon to completed components. The Automotive Work Group held its first meeting during Open Source Summit Japan on 19th of July. Learn More:

OpenChain Japan Licensing Sub-Group Meeting on 24th July

On July 24th the OpenChain Japan Licensing Sub Group held a meeting at the Olympus office in Shinagawa, Tokyo. The focus was on reviewing an English version of the OpenChain supplier education leaflet for review and discussion. Learn more:

OpenChain Launches Tooling Work Group

On July 25 the OpenChain Project announced the launch of our global Tooling Work Group. This work group, chaired by Oliver Fendt of Siemens, will see contributors from Siemens, Bosch, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Hitachi and many other companies accelerate collaboration around open source tooling for open source compliance. Learn more:

OpenChain Panel @ Open Source Summit Japan on 17th July

Fujitsu, Hitachi, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba and Toyota took the stage on the 17th of July to share the latest activities of OpenChain Japan Work Group. This event was moderated by Masato Endo from Toyota and featured Wang Mingyu (Fujitsu), Nobuo Imada (Hitachi), Shinsuke Kato (Panasonic), Yoshitake Kobayashi (Toshiba) and Satoru Ueda (Sony). Learn more:

Sony Talk @ Open Source Summit Japan – 18th July

Satoru Ueda from Sony hosted a talk entitled ‘OSS Collaborative Leadership and the Software Supply Chain Problem’ that unpacked practical aspects of supply chain challenges and related solutions. Learn more:

Toshiba @ Open Source Summit Japan on 18th July

Kouki Hama from Toshiba presented the following session: ‘Using SW360 for OSS Compliance Management Process.’ SW360 is OSS tool for centrally managing software component information, license information, vulnerability information, and etc. This tool also allows you to associate project information with many software components. Toshiba is centralizing information management of open source software by SW360.

Fujitsu China @ Open Source Summit Japan on 18th July

Wang Mingyu from Fujitsu is not exactly part of the Japan workgroup, but she is a member of Asaba-san’s team. She hosted a talk entitled
‘Dandified Way to Package Management in Yocto Project.’ Her talk referenced the OpenChain Specification as a solution for real world process management.

OpenChain + Program Offices @ Bird+Bird, Germany – 25th of June

News came in that Bird&Bird hosted an Open Source Program seminar on the 25th June 2019 to explore the cutting edge in Open Source Program Offices in Europe and beyond. The opening keynote was delivered by Amani Hajj Ali and Fabienne Haag from SAP, explaining how their company’s outbound process remains transparent and agile through the use of a standard like OpenChain. There was a group discussion focused on how OpenChain supports leadership position in open source management. Learn More:

OpenChain @ Materials and Case Studies

The OpenChain Japan Education Sub-Group has released training material for compliance programs and four company case studies regarding their approach to education. Learn more: