This text is the public declaration of intent of the OSPO Alliance hosted at OSPO.Zone, the Alliance promoting OSS Good Governance
The concept of the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) is currently gaining popularity as a cross-functional team to help define and steer an organisation’s open source management strategy and organizational readiness. The OSPO Alliance is a non-profit initiative launched as an unincorporated association of non-profit open source organisations and individuals with a desire to foster open source excellence in Europe and beyond.
In the US, OSPOs are becoming common in large companies with a technology focus and critical business reliance on open source software. Because the European ecosystem is different both in terms of scale and approach, we believe there is an interest in implementing the concept and intent of an OSPO in this context as well as an opportunity for related European innovation. We expect this approach, accommodating a range of scales of entity and also non-tech-corporate missions, will prove applicable globally.
As documented by several studies, open source software is becoming mainstream. For example, Red Hat estimates 1 that within the next two years, open source will account for two thirds of enterprise software. And a well-known result 2 published by Sonatype reveals that 80 to 90% of any new application consists of existing components, most of them open source. Now that open source software is everywhere, it cannot be ignored. It must be professionally managed.
Open source software is widely used but it is also important for its users to contribute to projects and publish code under an open source license. Open source software encompasses several dimensions and has specific impacts on technology architecture, software engineering processes, intellectual property, human resources, procurement, etc.
While there may be a growing shared body of experience as to how to manage open source licenses, there is still much to do toward a comprehensive methodology on how to manage open source in all its dimensions. There is no recognised state of the art in this domain. This hampers the progress of open source usage – most organisations move cautiously if they feel they are left on their own.
Helping mature a collective expertise in professional management of open source software by all kinds of organisations in all sectors of activity at the European level will be a boost to the open source ecosystem and a source of productivity gains and competitiveness for the whole European economy.
The OSPO Alliance aims to bring actionable guidance and solutions to all organisations willing to professionally manage the usage, contribution to and publication of open source software, regardless of their size, revenue model or whether public and private.
In particular it will help organisations make the best out of the inexorable advance of open source software in their information systems and processes. The OSPO Alliance will facilitate the discovery and implementation of tools and best practices when engaging with open source software.
By professionalizing the management of open source software, the OSPO Alliance will make engaging with open source software less risky and more predictable. It will lower barriers to adoption of open source and will enable organisations to leverage it to enhance their digital sovereignty.
The OSPO Alliance is built out of the OSS Good Governance blueprint developed by European open source organisation OW2 to help implement corporate-wide open source policies, and set up OSPOs. The methodology proposes a comprehensive approach based on five objectives inspired by a motivational behaviour model 3 .
The OSPO Alliance is building a global knowledge-sharing platform at OSPO.Zone and promotes a common approach, the OSS Good Governance methodology, to help organisations share best practices and leverage each other’s experience.
Organizations that deploy comprehensive management of open source software will increase their efficiency while reducing risks associated with using, contributing to, and publishing open source software.
Moreover, through mature engagement with open source, organisations will contribute to the growth of the ecosystems that supply their open source software.
The neutral, vendor-independent platform for sharing experience offered by the OSPO Alliance will help define the state of the art in open source management and provide useful guidance.
The OSPO Alliance will help define the role and remit of the Open Source Officer and propose a broadly accepted job description.
The OSPO Alliance belongs to the open source movement and builds upon its strong individual values of openness and sharing for the common good. We believe we can help disseminate those values society-wide by facilitating broad-scale adoption of open source software.
The OSPO Alliance is open to all parties willing to learn how to implement good open source governance and to contribute back their experience and expertise.
Note there is no commitment – financial nor otherwise – associated with supporting and joining the OSPO Alliance.
Please make a stand by signing the Support Agreement and join the mailing list!
1 2020 Red Hat Enterprise Open Source Survey
2 2018 DevSecOps Community Survey Results
3 Abraham Maslow, 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in Psychological Review
v1.0, © 2021 OSPO Alliance & authors, licensed under CC-BY-4.0Authors: Cédric Thomas (OW2) and Simon Phipps (Meshed Insights Ltd)