Monthly Newsletter

Newsletter – Issue 51 – February 2023

The OpenChain Newsletter provides a monthly summary of our work. It contains an overview of what we are doing to build trust around license compliance and security in the open source supply chain. This is a community newsletter, so we accept suggestions and ideas, and you can contact us by mail at any time.

Cool Statistic To Start The Year

The OpenChain Project now has 10 official third-party certifiers for our license compliance and security assurance standards.

You can now get third-party certified with ISO/IEC 5230 or the OpenChain Security Assurance Specification 1.1 anywhere in the world… and you have plenty of choice about who to work with. Of course, you have options when adopting our standards. The most common thing is actually for companies to start with self-certification, so if you are new to this… Learn more here)

Nice Outreach News

OpenChain now has a Wikipedia page about ISO/IEC 5230. Huge thank you to Marc-Etienne Vargenau at Nokia for making this happen.

Huge Revamp Of OpenChain Material Underway

Our reference library of over 1,000 documents to help you learn about our standards, train people or suppliers around open source, get policy templates, self-certification checklists and more has been totally overhauled. It is now easier to find material, easier to share material and easy to translate material.

We have also dramatically improved our community calendar to make it much easier to find our events, webinars and more.

ISO/IEC 5230:2020 Conformance

Yes Security and Panx Project announced adoption of our ISO/IEC standard for open source license compliance via the OpenChain website. Both companies self-certified. Yes Security is the first company from Brazil to announce conformance via our website. Well done!

Partner News

It was an exciting month for us on the partner side of things. First of all, we had OSPOCO and Taylor English Join The OpenChain Partner Program, and we had TIMETOACT GROUP Offer Open Source Certification Based On ISO/IEC 5230. However, the banner headline (as mentioned in the cool statistic section of this newsletter) is that we now have 10 official third-party certifiers around the world.

OpenChain Meetings And Events

Lots of recordings and minutes for those catching up this month.

Our global calls – where we edit the next generations of the license compliance and security assurance standards:

• OpenChain Monthly Meeting (North America – Europe) – 2023-02-07
• OpenChain Monthly Meeting (North America and Asia) 2023-02-21

Other community meetings:

• OpenChain Telco Special Interest Group – 2023-02-02
• OpenChain Japan Work Group Meeting #26 (Hybrid #1) – 2023-02-09
• OpenChain Education Work Group Meeting 2023-02-09
• OpenChain OSPO Subgroup Meeting / TODO Local Meetup Minutes 2023-02-10
• OpenChain OSPO Subgroup Meeting / TODO Local Meetup Minutes – 2023-02-17
• OpenChain Germany OpenChain Germany – LF Training Courses Translation Project 2024-02-24

On the “external collaboration” side of things we had an OSS Compliance in 2022 / 2023 event co-organized with FOSSID. We were also featured with a speech and Q&A session at an OpenAnolis Standardization SIG Meeting in China at the invitation of Alibaba.

Webinars

This month we had two webinars. One covered new security tools and one unpacked fascinating data points around GPLv2 licensing. Did you know there have been 40 versions of the GPLv2 published on its official websites and there have been 12 different versions found in the Linux Kernel? Definitely a webinar to watch if you are interested in the licensing side of things.

• Automation Case Study #7 – VulnerableCode technical deep dive into VulnTotal
• OpenChain Webinar #48 – GPLv2 Licensing History

Want to join our calls? Watch our webinars? Just check out our global calendar.

Training Material In The Supply Chain

Last month we mentioned that Continental Corporation made LFC193 a required course for their software developers from late Q3 2022. Since then we had two other soft announcements from community members about their adoption.

Coming Soon

For those wanting a sample of what’s on the community calendar for March…

• Coming Soon: OpenChain Webinar #49 – FOSDEM Recap – 2023-03-06
• Coming Soon: OpenChain Japan – OSPO Local Meetup – 2023-03-10 and 2023-03-24
• Coming Soon: OpenChain Export Control Work Group – Third Meeting – 2023-03-07
• Coming Soon: OpenChain Korea Work Group Meeting @ Line Plus – 2023-03-28
• Coming Soon: OpenChain UK Work Group Meeting @ BBC – 2023-03-28
• Coming Soon: OpenChain Germany Work Group Meeting – 2023-03-30

Finally… If You Want To Talk About OpenChain…

Our new community education slides are now available. You will find a full overview of the project here and speaker notes to help you talk about what we do.

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

Legal: All trademarks belong to their respective owners. This newsletter is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0).

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

Legal: All trademarks belong to their respective owners. This newsletter is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0).