Andrew Katz is currently in Tokyo at the Open Compliance Summit and shares his take on the event as well as providing an insight and update on the Template Open Source policy.

Brief overview by Andrew Katz, Moorcrofts CEO and Tech Partner

I’m excited to be back in the Japan for the Open Compliance Summit to catch up with open source friends from Asia and beyond, and to finalise the work we’ve been doing at Moorcrofts on the Template Open Source policy. OpenChain is the Linux Foundation’s compliance programme for open source development and distribution, I’ve been involved in its development since the early stages. Moorcrofts was the first OpenChain partner in the UK. For more information, take a look at Openchainproject.org, and the website of our sister compliance company, Orcro. In brief, if a company is compliant with the OpenChain Specification, it will find it much easier to supply software to large companies. OpenChain compliance is also smoothing the way for companies wanting to raise finance or exit in a sale. It’s supported by companies as diverse as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Uber, Panasonic, LG, Toyota, Scania (Volkswagen Group), Hitachi, Qualcomm, Sony. The list is pretty impressive, but it’s sufficiently flexible to be applicable to smaller companies as well – for example, we helped B2M Solutions reach OpenChain compliance recently.

The exciting news is that yesterday (16th December 2019) the OpenChain Project confirmed that the wording of version 2.1 of the specification has been frozen, with a view to submitting it to the International Standards Organisation (ISO) for official ISO adoption. I was in Lyon in October helping to finalise this wording. What’s even more exciting is that the ISO has indicated that the process will be much quicker than we’d previously suspected. In fact, it looks as though the ISO OpenChain Standard may be officially launched in April 2020. We’re busy helping clients reach for compliance with the upcoming standard, and we’re also about to make an announcement about a new compliance audit service which our sister company Orcro Limited will be launching in 2020.

To help companies reach compliance, we figured out at an early stage that it would be a lot easier if there was a template open source policy for them to use as the basis for compliance. There are plenty of template policies available, but none – until Moorcrofts introduced one – that are designed to work directly with the Open Chain Specification. We’ve updated our template for version 2.0 of the Specification, and it was formally launched by the Linux Foundation last week. Now, we’ve re-updated it to comply with version 2.1 – the version of the specification which will be submitted to ISO – and we are holding a workshop at the conference here in Tokyo to introduce the latest version to new users, and also the representatives of some of the Far East’s biggest companies who have been helping with suggestions as to issues which should be addressed in the policy. Much of the most exciting work around Open Chain has been happening in the Far East, and it’s great to be here at its spiritual home. For more information about version 2.0 of the Policy, see here https://www.openchainproject.org/news/2019/12/11/open-source-policy-template-2-0-in-chinese-traditional-and-english. We’ll provide a link to version 2.1 as soon as it’s been approved by the OpenChain Project.

I’d also like to give a big thank you to Katt Liu, who has been working with us at Moorcrofts for the last few months, and has done a fantastic job in translating version 2.0 of the policy into Traditional Chinese (see also https://www.openchainproject.org/news/2019/12/11/open-source-policy-template-2-0-in-chinese-traditional-and-english). Other translations are under way: Korean is in the process of being translated, and we are looking to introduce German and French translations soon. Watch this space!

For more information about OpenChain compliance and the Template Open Source policy, contact Andrew Katz.