Newsletter – Issue 50 – January 2023
After focusing on rolling news in 2022, the OpenChain Newsletter is back to provide a monthly summary of our work. You can expect an overview of what the OpenChain Project is doing to build trust around license compliance and security in the open source supply chain. You will also find other news directly related to our field. We accept suggestions and ideas. Just mail us at any time.
Cool Statistic To Start The Year
20% of German companies with over 2,000 employees have already implemented OpenChain ISO/IEC 5230:2020, the International Standard for open source license compliance.
Source: Bitkom Open Source Monitor 2021
Key Project Governance News
In Q4 2022 the OpenChain Project elected a new Governing Board Chair (Jimmy Ahlberg of Ericsson) as well as new co-chairs of the Specification Work Group (Helio Chissini de Castro, CARIAD + Chris Wood, Lockheed Martin) and a new chair of the Education Work Group (Nathan Kumagai, Qualcomm). This is all part of an initiative to ensure that the project has sustainable, clear and fair processes for leadership transition to ensure long-term sustainability.
Google Announces ISO/IEC 5230:2020 Conformant Program
We ended Q4 2022 with some exciting news. Google, an OpenChain Governing Board member and early adopter of the first generation OpenChain standard for open source license compliance, announced formal adoption of ISO/IEC 5230, the International Standard for open source license compliance.
Meanwhile, Around Security…
We have submitted the OpenChain Security Assurance Specification to the ISO/IEC JTC-1 PAS Transposition Process. We expect it to graduate as an ISO/IEC standard around mid-2023.
Security Assurance Specification Conformance
BlackBerry became the first multinational to go whole entity conformant with the OpenChain Security Assurance Specification. They also set a milestone as the first entity to achieve conformance with both OpenChain ISO5230:2020 and the OpenChain Security Assurance Specification 1.1.
That said, the very first company to announce adoption of the OpenChain Security Assurance Specification was Interneuron in the UK. This builds on their previous adoption of OpenChain ISO/IEC 5230:2020, and underlines their continued mission to seek excellence in open source software governance for the British National Health Service.
Security Assurance Specification Gains Additional Support
At the end of December 2022 we saw some significant announcements regarding support for the OpenChain Security Assurance Specification:
This support continued to grow in January 2023 with an announcement from Bitsea about their new services for customers around adoption.
OpenChain Meetings, Webinars And Events
Our monthly meetings kicked off with next generation specification reviews for North America / Europe and North American / Asia. We are seeing some solid discussion around the open issues on both the license compliance and security specifications. It is recommended to take part in these meetings if you have ideas, suggestions or comments about where you want our standards to go next.
We also held a Telco Special Interest Group meeting on the 12th of January and an Education Work Group meeting on the 19th of January. Telco are working on a meta specification about Software Bill of Materials. The Education Work Group is focused on renewal of core material to help people onboard with our standards. Everyone is welcome to join the calls and help out.
Want to join our calls? Just check out our global calendar.
The global calendar is also a great way to keep track of our webinars. We started the year with a great one: OpenChain Webinar #47 covered OSSelot: The Open Source Curation Database. OSSelot is a new project incubated by OSADL in Germany and promises to be an important part of automation tooling support moving forward.
Continuing our program of external collaboration, the OpenChain Project was also part of an external webinar about Applying OpenChain and SBOMs for InnerSource.
Our Training Material Continues To Support The Market
In 2021 and 2022 the OpenChain Education Work Group released online courses in collaboration with LF Training. During January we received some updates providing context for market impact.
Introduction to Open Source License Compliance Management (LFC193) has had 1,209 enrollments and 398 digital completion badges issued with a satisfaction rating of 4.65 out of 5. Implementing Open Source License Compliance Management (LFC194) has had 579 enrollments and 38 digital completion badges issued with a satisfaction rating of 4.55 out of 5. LFC194 has only been out a few months, so we look forward to continued adoption growth in 2023.
It is also noteworthy that Continental Corporation made LFC193 a required course for their software developers from late Q3 2022. This is a concrete example of a company leveraging free resources provided by OpenChain Project and The Linux Foundation to support their open source governance processes.
Check Out All Our Previous Newsletters:
https://www.openchainproject.org/newsletter
Quick Links
- Participate in our community mailing lists, calls, events and more (for free)
- Adopt OpenChain ISO/IEC 5230 (license compliance) or the Security Assurance Specification
- Get reference material, training material and other support
- Connect with official partners for commercial support services
- Learn more about our background and stakeholders
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