Newsletter – Issue 11 – March 2018

Introduction

This month is all about the OpenChain Specification. We are approaching a new release and are seizing the opportunity for reaffirming the core text and goals of the project. At the same time we are seeing new interest and engagement from both technology stakeholders and those from further afield. Speaking of further afield, we just released some milestone curriculum material in Simplified Chinese under CC-0 licensing (effectively public domain). See below.

OpenChain Specification

The OpenChain Project has developed a specification that defines a core set of requirements that a quality FOSS compliance program is expected to satisfy. Although it represents a minimum set of “must have” requirements, a significant degree of flexibility is given on how an organization might implement them. OpenChain Conformance helps to reduce concerns about open source compliance in organizations of all types and sizes.

We update the specification periodically based on feedback from our community. At the moment we are in the home stretch before releasing version 1.2 in April. This release does not change the requirements of the specification but introduces improvements to language and definitions to make OpenChain Conformance and translations easier. We are seeking public comments as we wrap things up.

Everyone is invited to make their voice heard before we conclude public comments on the 15th of April. You can review the latest draft of the OpenChain Specification – and see what has changed on page 3 – by heading to this link:
https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/_media/openchain/openchainspec-1.2.markup.draft.pdf

If you want a “clean” version of the current draft you can get it here:
https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/_media/openchain/openchainspec-1.2.draft.pdf

We welcome any and all feedback from all parties. The easiest way to provide such feedback and to get involved in the conversation is to mail our Specification list:
Openchain-specification@lists.linuxfoundation.org

Feel a little out of your depth? You can get a better understanding of how the specification was developed and what its goals are right here:
https://www.openchainproject.org/specification-faq

OpenChain Conformance and Case Studies

There are several large entities currently undergoing OpenChain Conformance. We are working closely with these new and old community partners to assist and to learn. OpenChain Conformance is often a two-way process, involving listening to great feedback that helps us improve the OpenChain Specification or the OpenChain Conformance process itself.

One of the first announcements coming up, and our first case study, is being arranged with Code4Health, a project of the English National Health Service and National Health Service Digital. We expect to formally release the case study and announce their conformance by the end of this month. Meanwhile, Code4Health – the first program inside the NHS to conform – is already Tweeting:

OpenChain @ Events

We have completed some interesting event outreach during the early part of March. One of the most notable was a workshop held in partnership with the Open Culture Foundation (Taiwan) on the 5th of March, an event that fits neatly into our Asian outreach priorities. A few points became clear:

• Most attendees had a direct interest in using some or all of the OpenChain curriculum to support their compliance efforts.
• All attendees expressed interest having open source compliance collaboration between companies to encourage deeper open source use in companies.
• Most attendees faced various challenges in explaining this to the administrative side of their businesses.

One area of useful feedback was that some attendees asked for future events to be held in Hsichu or Neihu so that their colleagues can join. Some may be able to offer a meeting room at their offices. Our colleagues at the Open Culture Foundation are exploring the opportunities and may hold another workshop in April or May.

OpenChain Project held a governing board meeting, a face-t0-face and a standing room-only talk at the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Leadership Summit in Sonoma. This event was a great chance to reconnect with many of our core constituents and to personally engage with some potential new contributors.

For those of you who are new to the project, our governing board consists of representatives from our 14 Platinum Members, and it meets once every quarter to discuss strategy. Their input ties directly into the activities of our Specification, Conformance, Curriculum and Onboarding work teams, each of which was represented or discussed during our open session. The OpenChain talk was delivered by Shane Coughlan, OpenChain Project Director, to the general Leadership Summit audience. It was interesting to note the level of engagement and questions fielded by the audience. It highlights both the amount of interest there is around improving compliance and areas where we can usefully focus on developing new onboarding or reference material.

The OpenChain Project has some forthcoming events that may be of interest to our readers:

1. In partnership with Moorcrofts in the UK the OpenChain Project announced details for an OpenChain session at a BCS event in London on the 22nd of March.
2. Shane Coughlan, OpenChain Project Director, will deliver a keynote on OpenChain at Linaro Connect in Hong Kong on the 22nd March.
3. The OpenChain Japan Work Group has announced that its third meeting will be held on the 19th of April at the Panasonic offices in Osaka.
4. The OpenChain Project will be featured in talks and workshops at the Legal Network ‘Legal and Licensing Workshop’ held in Barcelona between the 18th and 20th of April.

Keep track of all our events here:
https://www.openchainproject.org/events

OpenChain Internationalization

The OpenChain Curriculum slides are now available in Simplified Chinese. This is a significant milestone in sharing useful open source compliance information with a key target demographic. Great thanks are due to Hung Chang and Navia Shen for initiating the OpenChain Simplified Chinese translator team, to Lucien Lin for creating this translation, and to Florence Ko for review.

Get the slides in PDF, PPTX and ODP formats here:
https://github.com/OpenChain-Project/Curriculum-Translation-zh-Hans

Coming next

The next month will be all about case studies, reference material and expanding the community of conformance. Not to mention the formal release of the OpenChain Specification 1.2. Stay tuned and feel free to join any of our work teams at any time. You insights always help make us better.

License and Trademarks

Copyright 2018 The Linux Foundation. This newsletter is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0). Please feel free to share it onwards! OpenChain is a trademark of The Linux Foundation. It may be used according to The Linux Foundation Trademark Policy and the OpenChain Terms of Use. All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.

Newsletter – Issue 10 – February 2018

Introduction

The first two months of 2018 have been focused on building outreach in the China, Japan and Korea (CJK) region. We have established friendships and reached agreements to help spread the OpenChain Curriculum and broader OpenChain material to a wider audience. As part of this our localization efforts have continued at a rapid pace.

But that’s not all! OpenChain Project volunteers have been extremely busy prepare the version 1.2 update for the OpenChain Specification, we have seen background work to improve our free online conformance service, and our onboarding work team has entered a revision period for key documentation.

OpenChain Specification

The latest draft of the OpenChain Specification 1.2 can be accessed here:
https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/_media/openchain/openchainspec-1.2.draft.pdf

This draft will be finalized at the OpenChain Face-to-Face at the Open Source Leadership Summit in March (see below) and is expected to be released in April. While it contains no new requirements and represents a minor change to the specification, this revision offers substantially improved clarity and ease of translation.

OpenChain Onboarding

The Onboarding team is looking for final feedback or edits for two documents as we prepare to share material at the Open Source Leadership Summit:

• OpenChain General Handout:
  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tcXITiwFbUqK9JTEwz_JLJhtG9GRPyQa4cLdSULKn0I/edit?usp=sharing
• OpenChain Checklist Handout:
  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LFx9mK0ZaZMLZzZ2mjlHAqgFdQNuYrCXVnFfmgFZdcU/edit?usp=sharing

OpenChain Conformance Web App

The OpenChain Conformance Web App has obtained various improvements to version control and – more recently – taken the first steps towards internationalization. Our goal is to release the web app in multiple languages from Q2 onwards.

OpenChain @ Events

The OpenChain Project has been fleshing out our 2018 event calendar with a series of announcements:

1. The OpenChain Japan Work Group announced details for its second meeting on the 22nd of February.
2. In partnership with the Open Culture Foundation (Taiwan) the OpenChain Project announced details of a Curriculum Workshop in Taipei on the 5th of March.
3. The schedule of the next OpenChain Face-to-Face meeting has been announced for the 5th of March at the Open Source Leadership Summit in Sonoma.
4. In partnership with Moorcrofts in the UK the OpenChain Project announced details for an OpenChain session at a BCS event in London on the 22nd of March.
5. We have also been in the fortunate position of being able to outline further details of expected future activities in Taiwan and Mainland China. While some details are subject to change the key take-away is that we are seeing healthy progress towards deeper engagement in a key market area.

Keep track of all our events here:
https://www.openchainproject.org/events

OpenChain Accessibility

To support our recent expansion of workshops in the Far East we have had a strong of excellent announcements regarding localization resources.

1. The OpenChain Curriculum, a slide deck that covers everything from “what is a license” through to open source developer guides, has been released in Traditional Chinese. This excellent development owes much thanks to Lucien Lin and Florence Ko of the Open Culture Foundation (Taiwan).
2. An additional output of this process has be a published draft for the Simplified Chinese translation of the same material. This draft provides a foundation for our volunteers to work towards a complete release in the near future.

As always this material is available in editable formats on our GitHub in both Traditional and Simplified Chinese.

Coming next

In the next month you can expect announcements regarding the Specification version 1.2, new onboarding material, and feedback regarding our Curriculum. Moving into Q2 you can expect increased internationalization, further engagement in North America and Europe, and case studies or reference material to support adoption.

License and Trademarks

Copyright 2018 The Linux Foundation. This newsletter is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0). Please feel free to share it onwards! OpenChain is a trademark of The Linux Foundation. It may be used according to The Linux Foundation Trademark Policy and the OpenChain Terms of Use. All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.

Issue 9 – January 2018

Introduction

A happy new year to all our readers! As we kick off 2018 the OpenChain Project is announcing a wide range of talks, meetings and keynotes. We are also putting in place material and relationships to spearhead increased engagement with Japanese and Chinese-speaking stakeholders. We look forward to working with our entire community throughout 2018 to drive adoption of the OpenChain Specification, our reference training material, and to raise the bar for open source compliance knowledge in general.

OpenChain @ Events

The OpenChain Project has been fleshing out our 2018 event calendar with a series of announcements:

1. The OpenChain Project will be featured at the World Intellectual Property Forum on the 18th January in Dubai.
   https://goo.gl/njjEPR
2. The OpenChain Japan Work Group has announced its second meeting on the 22nd February at Hitachi Shinagawa.
   https://goo.gl/iPseg1
3. The OpenChain Project will host a Face-to-Face on the 5th March at the Open Source Leadership Summit, Sonoma Valley.
   https://goo.gl/1y93MM
4. The OpenChain Project will be featured in a keynote on the 19th to 23rd March at Linaro Connect in Hong Kong.
   https://goo.gl/cukxwq
5. The OpenChain Project will be featured in a talk at an event hosted by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, on the 22nd of March in London, England.
   https://goo.gl/ZPiqsw
6. The OpenChain Japan Work Group has announced its second meeting on the 19th April at Panasonic Osaka.
   https://goo.gl/z5dJTs
7. The OpenChain Project will be featured in a keynote on June 13th to 14th at the FOSS Backstage conference in Berlin, Germany.
   https://goo.gl/vfVaLq

Keep track of all our events here:
https://www.openchainproject.org/events

OpenChain Accessibility

The OpenChain Project has begin to plan outreach activities in Taiwan as an outcome of a meeting held with representatives of the Open Culture Foundation (Taipei) on the 27th of December. Further information about the meeting can be found here:
https://goo.gl/yEidJ2
The key outcome is that OCF and OpenChain plan to hold an OpenChain Curriculum workshop during Q1 or early Q2 2018. Watch this space for further details.

The OpenChain Project is also delighted to announce that our reference flowcharts are now available in Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
You can obtain the reference flowcharts in Simplified Chinese here:
https://goo.gl/excGyh
You can obtain the reference flowcharts in Traditional Chinese here:
https://goo.gl/pK8pVj

These build on our previous releases of the OpenChain Specification in Simplified and Traditional Chinese. You can obtain these and all our other translations at this URL:
https://www.openchainproject.org/translations

OpenChain Outreach

The OpenChain Project has been featured in an interview with Shane Coughlan, Project Director, on the OWASP 24/7 Podcast. The long-form interview covers the background of the project, our current status and our goals for 2018. It provides a simple, clear way to explain OpenChain to potential stakeholders. You can access it here:
https://goo.gl/yU9NHo

Coming next

In the next month you can expect the OpenChain Project to fix the dates for our increased Taiwanese outreach, you can expect to see the first results from our activity to expand the community of conformance, and you will see the emergence of reference material to help frame the types of process that might be useful for inbound and outbound software. As always we welcome feedback and contributions from all parties. You can contact Shane Coughlan, the Project Director, at any time.

License and Trademarks

Copyright 2018 The Linux Foundation. This newsletter is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0). Please feel free to share it onwards! OpenChain is a trademark of The Linux Foundation. It may be used according to The Linux Foundation Trademark Policy and the OpenChain Terms of Use. All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.

tl;dr

More OpenChain Conformant Organizations; More Translations; More Onboarding Material. Our community is growing rapidly and our specification is proven as adoptable by large and small entities.

OpenChain Conformance

There are two major news items related to OpenChain Conformance. The first is that we have welcomed four new entities to our community in the last month:

If you are interested in learning more you can check out the individual news items:

• Source Auditor: https://goo.gl/v9wG9J
• Ura Design: https://goo.gl/nigwAJ
• Togan Labs: https://goo.gl/xr1W5j
• Source Code Control: https://goo.gl/egD3gB

The second major conformance news item is that we have launched a logo for all OpenChain Conformant organizations to use:

The OpenChain Conformance logo will become an increasingly familiar sight in the supply chain over time. There will be more information about our plans for expanded adoption in the next newsletter.

• You can learn more about our launch here: https://goo.gl/gmRNcy

OpenChain @ Events

We attended the Asian Legal Network meeting in Tokyo and LinuxCon China in Beijing.

• Learn more about OpenChain at the Asian Legal Network: https://goo.gl/X9LpqF
• Learn more about OpenChain at LinuxCon China: https://goo.gl/kV4My3

You can watch our LinuxCon China talk and view our slides here: https://goo.gl/fBaBcB

• No time? Jump to the “Big Picture” overview of OpenChain here: https://goo.gl/gVPo7w

This overview is suitable as a starting point for business decision-makers and other non-technical parties interested in why OpenChain exists and how it delivers value.

New Material Donations

We have received donations of flowcharts, checklists and a markdown conversation of the OpenChain Specification during the last month.

• Learn more about the flowcharts and checklists: https://goo.gl/WDBPe8
• Learn more about the Markdown donation: https://goo.gl/KMNmpe

New Curriculum Chair

We are delighted to announce that Alexios Zavras from Intel is the new chair of the OpenChain Curriculum Work Team. Alexios holds the position of Senior Open Source Compliance Engineer at Intel and has long been a contributor to projects in the Linux Foundation and further afield.

• Read our announcement here: https://goo.gl/AQnJac
• Connect with Alexios on LinkedIn here: https://goo.gl/UkdDSK

New Ways to Communicate

We have continued to expand the ways that people can find and interact with the OpenChain Project. This month we added appointment reservations to the OpenChain Facebook Page. Our goal is to make it possible to discover, interact with and participate in OpenChain as easily as possible.

• Learn more here: https://goo.gl/1e3nJB

OpenChain Internationalization

We have seen heavy activity on the internationalization front. The two stand-out pieces of news are the release of our onboarding material and our Frequently Asked Questions page in Japanese.

• Learn more about the Japanese onboarding material: https://goo.gl/FhnWb9
• Learn more about the Japanese FAQ: https://goo.gl/jr8ofj

What’s Next?

In the next month we will announce our partner program pilot, we will continue to expand our internationalization efforts, and we will improve both the website and the format used for our newsletter. Learn more in the next newsletter or on the OpenChain mailing list: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/openchain

License and Trademarks

Copyright 2017 The Linux Foundation. This newsletter is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0). Please feel free to share it onwards! OpenChain is a trademark of The Linux Foundation. It may be used according to The Linux Foundation Trademark Policy and the OpenChain Terms of Use. All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.

Download as a PDF

Newsletter #2, June 2017

Welcome to the second OpenChain newsletter! This is the heartbeat for what’s hot in The OpenChain Project right now, what’s coming next, and how you engage. Comments, suggestions and contributions are always welcome at coughlan@linux.com!

Shane Coughlan
OpenChain Program Manager

OpenChain Onboarding Material Launch

On the 25th of May we announced that OpenChain was producing onboarding material designed to help companies of all sizes understand and engage with our mission of making Open Source compliance simple, effective and efficient throughout the supply chain. By the 31st  of May our volunteer team had completed review and we went live with handouts and slides. These are an executive summary that explains the who, what, where, when and how of OpenChain, our specification, our curriculum and our free online self-certification. The official announcement is here:
https://www.openchainproject.org/news/2017/05/31/openchain-project-releases-translations-and-onboarding-packages

Get the onboarding handout in PDF format here:
https://www.openchainproject.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2017/05/openchain-onboarding-handout-1.0.pdf

Get the onboarding slides in PDF format here:https://www.openchainproject.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2017/05/openchain-onboarding-slides-1.0.pdf

OpenChain Community Growth

The OpenChain community has expanded recently with self-certification by LG Electronics and NextCloud GmbH. These developments help to underline our strategy of being equally suitable for big and small companies across the global supply chain:

“OpenChain Conformance is designed for companies of all sizes that deal with open source software,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain Program Manager. “NextCloud is a high profile, high growth startup that adheres to the same overarching compliance processes as multinationals. It is a clear example of why OpenChain Conformance is the correct approach to establishing an industry standard for open source compliance in the supply chain.”
https://www.openchainproject.org/news/2017/06/06/nextcloud

OpenChain @ Events

OpenChain was featured at a special event held by BKL law offices in Seoul on the 30th of May:
https://www.openchainproject.org/news/2017/05/30/special-seminar-to-discuss-the-openchain-project-in-seoul

It was also explained by Shane Coughlan, OpenChain Program Manager, at Open Compliance Summit Japan on the 31st of May:
https://www.openchainproject.org/news/2017/05/31/exploring-topical-issues-at-open-compliance-summit-japan

And it will feature as a central topic of discussion at the Asian Legal Network event hosted by Open Invention Network and DLA Piper on the 16th of June:
https://www.openchainproject.org/news/2017/06/15/openchain-at-the-asian-legal-network

OpenChain Expands Translation Effort

On the 31st of May we also announced that translations were a first-class citizen in the OpenChain Project and launched a dedicated page to host the activities of our diverse volunteer teams:
https://www.openchainproject.org/translations

We currently have official translations in Japanese and Portuguese, unofficial translations in Korean, and expect further announcements in the near future. Kudos to everyone involved!

OpenChain Explained

We have received quite a lot of media interest around the launch of the OpenChain Specification 1.1. Linux Weekly News provided especially deep coverage and – since the 18th of May – their material has been freely available on the internet.

Check out LWN’s overview of OpenChain:
https://www.openchainproject.org/news/2017/05/18/openchain-featured-in-linux-weekly-news

Check out LWN’s deep-dive on the OpenChain Specification 1.1:
https://www.openchainproject.org/news/2017/05/18/openchain-specification-1-1-deep-dive-in-linux-weekly-news

What’s Next?

OpenChain’s community of contributors is continuing to grow. Work has begun on the next version of our Specification, Conformance service and Curriculum. These are all scheduled for potential release in 2018. Meanwhile, our immediate focus remains on adoption of the existing material.

In the near term you can expect a simple, effective way for OpenChain adopters to advertise OpenChain Conformance and expanded onboarding materials. You can also expect to hear about a new pilot partner program to build a commercial eco-system to support our community. Learn more in the next newsletter or on the OpenChain mailing list: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/openchain

License and Trademarks

Copyright 2017 The Linux Foundation. This newsletter is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0). Please feel free to share it onwards! OpenChain is a trademark of The Linux Foundation. It may be used according to The Linux Foundation Trademark Policy and the OpenChain Terms of Use.

Download as a PDF