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Magma Project Accelerates with Establishment of Magma Core Foundation and New Members Under Open Governance

Thu, 04/22/2021 - 00:00

Project embraces open governance model, creates new neutral, cross-community Technical Steering Committee open for collaboration
Community welcomes 11 new member organizations fostering innovation for 5G mobile packet core
Magma Core Foundation’s project roadmap integral to cross-community collaboration enabling end-to-end solutions and blueprints

SAN FRANCISCO– April 21, 2021 – Today, the Magma project, an open-source software platform that gives network operators an open, flexible and extendable mobile core network solution, announced project and community growth since its recent move to the Linux Foundation to establish a neutral governance framework.

Since moving to the Linux Foundation, Magma has made strides as a community, in partnership with the Open Infrastructure Foundation and OpenAirInterface Software Alliance. The collaboration has formally become the Magma Core Foundation, and project and community growth includes new members, the adoption of a master architecture roadmap, and formation of a neutral governance structure. In addition, the community will host its first Linux Foundation-managed event, Magma Day, co-located with KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2021.

“We are pleased to see the Magma Core Foundation continue to evolve as a leader in network innovation,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge, and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “Additional collaboration efforts are underway via initiatives like the 5G Super Blueprint which enables communities to build and augment modern networks at scale across 5G, carrier Wi-Fi, private LTE, and more.”

“The OpenAirInterface Software Alliance continues to participate in the Magma Core Foundation as a major contributor to the developments of the core network,” said Irfan Ghauri, Director of Operations of the OpenAirInterface Software Alliance. “The seed code for one of the main components of the Magma core (MME) is in fact OAI. The fact that early implementations are making it into production improving users’ lives is in itself a great source of satisfaction for the OSA. The Alliance continues to contribute through its engineers in the entrails of the Magma core and looks forward to increased adoption of the latter, as greater stability and completeness is achieved over time. This is very hard work but the OSA remains committed to delivering the next features including non-stand alone support and others.”

“Since the early days of the Magma project, the OpenInfra Foundation and our global community have aligned with the community’s goals to connect the next billion people,” said Mark Collier, COO of the Open Infrastructure Foundation and member of the Magma Core Foundation governing board. “We support the development of Magma to form a next-generation mobile networking stack that’s aligned with our mission to create open infrastructure code that runs in production. We’re excited to see more organizations coming on board to collaborate with us as we support that goal.”

The Magma Core Foundation welcomes 11 new member organizations across CSPs, processing, storage, edge, and more. New members 0chain, Aarna Networks, Connect5G, FreedomFi, GenXComm, Helium, Highway9Networks, MotoJeannie, Shoelace Wireless, Vapor IO, and Whitestack join existing members, including Arm, Deutsche Telekom, and Facebook. The community will work collaboratively on the future of mobile network core solutions, via a new architecture roadmap that’s 3GPP generation and access network (cellular or WiFi) agnostic. It can flexibly support a radio access network with minimal development and deployment effort, and includes three major components: Access Gateway, Orchestrator, and Federation Gateway.

To help shepherd this work, a new neutral governance structure, including a Technical Steering Committee (TSC), has been formed. Newly-elected TSC members include Marie Bremner, Raphael Defosseus, Hunter Gatewood, Scott Moeller, and Pravin Shelar.

Magma Day

Join the Magma Core Project community on May 3 from 2:30 – 6:00 pm CEST for a virtual Magma Day event. Co-located with KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2021, Magma Day is designed to bring CNCF/Kubernetes, LF Networking, and LF Edge communities working across 4G, 5G, and global connectivity together. Magma Day will include a comprehensive review of Magma (use cases, roadmap, vision, architecture) and how to build end-to-end telecom solutions using Magma across open source projects. Access the event schedule and register to add Magma Day to your KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2021 registration today.

Member support for the Magma Core Foundation

0chain

“0Chain powered Magma enables siloed WiFi connectivity within businesses to form a seamless augmented network to enhance mobile user experience and reduce operator costs”, said Saswata Basu, CEO & Founder of 0Chain, world leader in blockchain and decentralized storage. “In addition, 0Chain dramatically cuts contract negotiation time from years to seconds, and provides dynamic pricing for augmented network providers.”

Aarna Networks

“We are delighted to join the Magma Core project,” said Amar Kapadia, co-founder and CEO, Aarna Networks. “By integrating Magma Core with ONAP and Kubernetes, we plan to provide communication service providers, government organizations, and enterprises with a fully open source solution that could democratize and accelerate 5G deployments worldwide.”

Connect5G

“Magma is the one and truly pioneering project – providing open, unified and access convergent networking. We at Connect 5G believe that the future of the global communication lies in the open technology stacks. Our mission is to bring the rural and remote areas to the global network,” said Patrik Melander, chairman and CEO, Connect5G, Inc. “For that purpose we selected Magma as the one and truly pioneering project that provides open, unified and access convergent networking layer.”

FreedomFi

“Most common customer objection about any open source project is that it’s not enterprise ready. We’ve heard those objections about Linux and Kubernetes for years prior to those becoming a standard, and we’ve heard a lot of the same about Magma last year.” said Boris Renski, Co-Founder and CEO at FreedomFi. “This year we start seeing customers like Access Parks choosing Magma over a variety of open source and proprietary alternatives to power hundreds of cell sites across the national and state park system. We are quickly approaching the end of Magma-is-not-enterprise-ready cycle and are excited to collaborate with the Linux foundation to grow the project ecosystem.”

Helium

“Helium started with a vision to enable wireless networks for IoT powered by the people with a new blockchain-based incentive model,” said Frank Mong, the COO of Helium Inc. “We’re excited to join the Linux Foundation and the Magma ecosystem to continue to make building all wireless networks possible by combining cryptocurrency, open source, and bringing access to more people globally.”

Highway9 Networks

“Magma significantly opens, modernizes and steers the mobility core stack. Highway9 Networks is excited to partner with the Magma community as we deliver innovative 5G ready edge cloud solutions to the enterprise,” said Allwyn Sequeira, Founder/CEO of Highway9 Networks

MotoJeannie

“Magma Core provides the necessary toolset that’s needed for the industry to innovate. At MotoJeannie, we use a curated form of Magma core, enabling us to focus on delivering the desired value to our end customers. Linux foundation knows how to develop values for the ecosystem using open source, and we are very excited to be part of this community,” said Auyush Sharma, founder and CEO, MotoJeannie.

Shoelace Wireless

“Magma converged core provides cost effective cloud native orchestration of WiFi and LTE networks which is critical for Shoelace Wireless’ intelligent-edge multipath traffic steering, switching, and aggregation technology to enable use cases such as: network augmentation, smart contract roaming, predictive traffic steering, and HetNet optimization,” said Jim Mains, CEO, Shoelace Wireless. “The fact that Magma is open-sourced also allows us to work with innovative partners to accelerate market deployment which otherwise would take many years.”

Vapor.io

“Open technologies like Magma will help revolutionize both US and global communications infrastructure,” said Cole Crawford founder & CEO of edge and grid infrastructure company Vapor IO. “We have always believed that neutral host multi-tenancy and shared infrastructure unlock the economics that enable the worldwide rollout of advanced networks like 5G. Vapor IO’s Kinetic services are ideal for Magma, and we look forward to working with our partners to implement and deploy it on our network.”

Resources

About the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

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The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

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The Linux Foundation Hosts Open19 to Accelerate Data Center and Edge Hardware Innovation

Wed, 04/21/2021 - 21:00

Open19 framework enables data center hardware design that powers edge, 5G and custom cloud deployments worldwide, brings both hardware and software under the Linux Foundation with fellow Yuval Bachar

SAN FRANCISCO, April 21, 2021 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it will host the Open19 Foundation, an open hardware platform for data center and edge hardware innovation. It is also announcing that one of the original founders of the Open19 project, Yuval Bachar, is joining the Linux Foundation to lead this effort. Project leadership includes premiere members Equinix and Cisco.

Open19 focuses on hardware standards that enable compute, storage and network manufacturers and end users to develop differentiated hardware solutions while protecting their competitive intellectual property. With the addition of Open19, The Linux Foundation is hosting data center hardware and software under one virtual roof.

“As the open hardware project of The Linux Foundation, the Open19 Project is dedicated to creating solutions that help digital businesses take advantage of specialized infrastructure,” said Zachary Smith, Open19 Foundation chairperson and Managing Director of Equinix Metal. “We are excited to join The Linux Foundation to solve the challenges facing modern data centers with collaborative, open, community-led innovation.”

Open19 provides a framework for accessing and deploying hardware innovation at any scale, from edge environments to large-scale custom clouds. With its unique intellectual property model and market-leading specifications with proven adoption, Open19 enables technology providers, supply chain partners, cloud service providers, telecoms and tech forward enterprises to leverage shared investments to address the exploding needs of modern compute and network deployments while minimizing risk. This reduces time to market for new solutions while substantially lowering the cost of operations.

“Open19 is revolutionizing the way we approach hardware,” said Yuval Bachar, Open 19 Foundation Fellow. “The time to invest in open hardware has never been more pressing. With the transformation happening as a result of AI, 5G and edge networking, in particular, the opportunity for innovation is ripe, and Open19 will accelerate it.”

Yuval Bachar founded the Open19 project and is returning to support the project and its community under the Linux Foundation. His career includes technical leadership roles at Microsoft, LinkedIn, Facebook and Cisco. Bachar has been on the forefront of some of the industry’s most important technology developments, from data center networking to data center self healing with Machine Learning, AI and predictive maintenance. Most recently, he was Principal Hardware Architect of the Azure Platform at Microsoft. Previously, he was Principal Engineer in the global infrastructure and strategy team at LinkedIn, the leader and architect for Facebook’s data center networking hardware and Senior Director of Engineering in the CTO office at Cisco.

The Linux Foundation provides an open governance model and a vendor neutral home to a variety of projects working to advance open hardware and data center innovation. This framework nurtures cross-project collaboration among Open19, DPDK, OpenBMC, and RISC-V projects; the LF Edge, OpenPower and Cloud Native Computing Foundations; and incubating projects such as bare metal provisioning engine Tinkerbell, among others. Formal collaborations are expected to be announced in the coming months.

“The Open19 Community has been doing crucial work to accelerate open source hardware design to meet the needs of modern data centers and the edge,” said Arpit Joshipura, General manager, Networking, Edge & IOT at The Linux Foundation. “We are excited to welcome Open19 as our growing community defines the next generation of digital infrastructure.”

Originally founded in 2016 by a community of cloud infrastructure innovators looking to solve the cost, efficiency and operational challenges of modern data center deployments, solutions based on Open19 technology are now deployed at leading global providers. Open19 provides specifications for servers, storage and networking components designed to fit in any 19-inch data center rack environment. The project features common elements to enable platform innovation: flexible server “bricks” (server nodes with standard power supply and network delivery, plus cooling); a mechanical cage to house bricks; a standardized power shelf and blind mate power and data connectors.

Driven by strong industry adoption, members are working now on the next-generation of the Open19 specification and invite others to get involved. It is expected to be available mid-year 2021. For more information, please visit: www.open19.org

About The Open19 Project

The Open19 project, as part of The Linux Foundation, designs and promotes a form factor specification that includes a brick cage, server brick form factor, power shelf and unique blind mate power and data connectors. These components allow service providers and enterprises to leverage the first data center form factor design for a cloud and edge-native world.

About The Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. The Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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Media Contacts

Jennifer Cloer
for the Open19 Foundation and Linux Foundation
503-867-2304
jennifer@storychangesculture.com

Jennifer Lankford
for Equinix
503-308-2553
jennifer@lankfordpr.co

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ELISA Project Welcomes Codethink, Horizon Robotics, Huawei Technologies, NVIDIA and Red Hat to its Global Ecosystem

Mon, 04/19/2021 - 23:00

SAN FRANCISCO – April 19, 2020 – Today, the ELISA (Enabling Linux in Safety Applications) Project, an open source initiative that aims to create a shared set of tools and processes to help companies build and certify Linux-based safety-critical applications and systems, announced that Codethink, Horizon Robotics, Huawei Technologies, NVIDIA and Red Hat has joined its global ecosystem.

Linux is used in safety-critical applications with all major industries because it can enable faster time to market for new features and take advantage of the quality of the code development processes which decreases the issues that could result in loss of human life, significant property damage, or environmental damage. Launched in February 2019 by the Linux Foundation, ELISA will work with certification authorities and standardization bodies across industries to document how Linux can be used in safety-critical systems.

“Open source software has become a significant part of the technology strategy to accelerate innovation for companies worldwide,” said Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems at The Linux Foundation. “We want to reduce the barriers to be able to use Linux in safety-critical applications and welcome the collaboration of new members to help build specific use cases for automotive, medical and industrial sectors.”

Milestones

After a little more than two years, ELISA has continued to see momentum in project and technical milestones. Examples include:

Successful Workshops: In February, ELISA hosted its 6th workshop with more than 120 registered participants. During the workshop, members and external speakers discussed cybersecurity expectations in the automotive world, code coverage of glibc and Intel’s Linux test robot. Learn more in this blog. The next workshop is scheduled for May 18-20 and is free to attend. Register here.
New Ambassador Program: In October 2020, ELISA launched a program with thought leaders with expertise in functional safety and Linux kernel development. These ambassadors are willing to speak at events, write articles and work directly with the community on mentorships or onboarding new contributors. Meet the ambassadors here.
Mentorship Opportunities: The Linux Foundation offers a Mentorship Program with projects that are designed to help developers with the necessary skills to contribute effectively to open source communities. A recent program, ELISA participated in the Fall 2020 session with Code coverage metrics for GLibC and a Linux Kernel mentorship focused on CodeChecker. This project supports ELISA’s goals to gain experience in using various status analysis methods and tools available in the Linux kernel. Learn more here.
Working Groups: Since launch, the project has created several working groups that collaborate and work towards providing resources for System integrators to apply and use to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively on their systems. Current groups include an Automotive Working Group, Medical Devices Working Group, Safety Architecture Working Group, Kernel Development Process Working Group and Tool Investigation and Code Improvement Sub-Working Group to focus on specific activities and goals. Learn more or join a working group here.

“The primary challenge is selecting Linux components and features that can be evaluated for safety and identifying gaps where more work is needed to evaluate safety sufficiently,” said Shuah Khan, Chair of the ELISA Project Technical Steering Committee and Linux Fellow at the Linux Foundation. “We’ve taken on this challenge to make it easier for companies to build and certify Linux-based safety-critical applications by exploring potential methods to enable engineers to answer that question for their specific system.”

Learn more about the goals and technical strategy in this white paper.

Growing Ecosystem

After a little more than two years, the ELISA Project has grown by 300%. With new members Codethink, Horizon Robotics, Huawei Technologies, NVIDIA and Red Hat, the project currently has 20 members that collaborate to define and maintain a standardized set of processes and tools that can be integrated into Linux-based, safety-critical systems seeking safety certification. These new members join BMW Car IT GmbH, Intel, Toyota, ADIT, AISIN AW CO., arm, Elektrobit, Kuka, Linuxtronix. Mentor, Suzuki, Wind River, Automotive Grade Linux and OTH Regensburg.

“Codethink has been working with ELISA for a few years and we are excited to continue our engagement as a member,” said Shaun Mooney, Division Manager at Codethink. “Open Source Software, particularly Linux, is being used more and more in safety applications and Codethink has been looking at how we can make software trustable for a long time. We’ve been working to understand how we can use complex software and guarantee it will function as we want it to. This problem needs to be tackled collectively and ELISA is a great place to collaborate with experts in both safety and software. We’ve been working with most of the working groups since the start of ELISA and will continue to be active participants, using our expert knowledge of Linux and Open Source to help advance the state of the art for safety.”

“Safety is the most important feature of a self-driving car,” said Huang Chang, co-founder and CTO of Horizon Robotics. “Horizon’s investment into functional safety is one of the most important ones we’ve ever made, and it provides a critical ingredient for automakers to bring self-driving cars to market. The creative safety construction the ELISA project is undertaking complements Horizon’s functional safety endeavor and continued commitment to certifying Linux-based safety-critical systems.”

“Huawei is one of the most important Linux kernel contributors and recently joined the automotive industry as strategic partner in Asia and Europe,” said Alessandro Biasci, Technical Expert at Huawei.“ We are pleased to further advance our mission and participate in ELISA, which will allow us to combine our experience in the Linux kernel development and knowledge in safety and security to bring Linux to safety-critical applications.”

“Edge computing extends enterprise software from the datacenter and cloud to a myriad of operational and embedded technology footprints that interact with the physical world, such as connected vehicles and manufacturing equipment,” said Chris Wright, Chief Technical Officer at Red Hat. “A common open source software platform across these locations simplifies and accelerates solution development, while supporting functional safety’s end goal of reducing the risk of physical injury. Red Hat recognizes the importance of establishing functional safety evidence and certifications for Linux, backed by a rich platform and vibrant ecosystem for safety-related applications. We are excited to bring our twenty-seven years of Linux expertise to the ELISA community’s work.”

For more information about ELISA, visit https://elisa.tech/.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

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What we learned from our survey about returning to in-person events

Fri, 04/16/2021 - 21:00

Recently, the Linux Foundation Events team sent out a survey to past attendees of all events from 2018 through 2021 to get their feedback on how they feel about virtual events and gauge their thoughts on returning to in-person events. We sent the survey to 69,000 people and received 972 responses.

The enclosed PDF document summarizes the results of that survey. Click on the embedded image to see the page advance controls.

LF-Events-surveyApril2021

Ultimately the good news here is that a healthy number of people feel comfortable traveling this year for events, especially domestically in the US. The results also show that about 1/4 of respondents like virtual events, and the vast majority of people who told us that they had attended in-person events before — another reason to keep a hybrid format moving forward.

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SODA Foundation Announces 2021 Data & Storage Trends Survey

Thu, 04/15/2021 - 21:00

Data and storage technologies are evolving. The SODA Foundation is conducting a survey to identify the current challenges, gaps, and trends for data and storage in the era of cloud-native, edge, AI, and 5G. Through new insights generated from the data and storage community at large, end-users will be better equipped to make decisions, vendors can improve their products, and the SODA Foundation can establish new technical directions — and beyond!

The SODA Foundation is an open source project under Linux Foundation that aims to foster an ecosystem of open source data management and storage software for data autonomy. SODA Foundation offers a neutral forum for cross-project collaboration and integration and provides end-users quality end-to-end solutions. We intend to use this survey data to help guide the SODA Foundation and its surrounding ecosystem on important issues.

Please participate now; we intend to close the survey in late May.

Privacy and confidentiality are important to us. Neither participant names, nor their company names, will be displayed in the final results.

The first 50 survey respondents will each receive a $25 (USD) Amazon gift card. Some conditions apply.

This survey should take no more than 15 minutes of your time.

To take the 2021 SODA Foundation Data & Storage Trends Survey, click the button below:

Take Survey (EN) Take Survey (調査) Take Survey (民意调查)

Thanks to our survey partners CNCF, SNIA, CESI, and JDSF

SURVEY GOALS

Thank you for taking the time to participate in this survey conducted by SODA Foundation, an open source project at the Linux Foundation focusing on data management and storage.

This survey will provide insights into the challenges, gaps, and trends for data and storage in the era of cloud-native, edge, AI, and 5G. We hope these insights will help end-users make better decisions, enable vendors to improve their products and serve as a guide to the technical direction of SODA and the surrounding ecosystem.

This survey will provide insights into:

What are the data & storage challenges faced by end-users?
Which features and capabilities do end users look for in data and storage solutions?
What are the key trends shaping the data & storage industry?
Which open source data & storage projects are users interested in?
What cloud strategies are businesses adopting?

PRIVACY

Your name and company name will not be displayed. Reviews are attributed to your role, company size, and industry. Responses will be subject to the Linux Foundation’s Privacy Policy, available at https://linuxfoundation.org/privacy. Please note that members of the SODA Foundation survey committee who are not LF employees will review the survey results and coordinate the gift card giveaways. If you do not want them to have access to your name or email address in connection with this, please do not provide your name or email address and you will not be included in the giveaway.

VISIBILITY

We will summarize the survey data and share the learnings during SODACON Global 2021 – Virtual on Jul 13-14. The summary report will be published on the SODA website. In addition, we will be producing an in-depth report of the survey which will be shared with all survey participants.

SODACON GLOBAL 2021

Interested in attending or speaking at SODACON Global? Details for the event can be found at https://sodafoundation.io/events/sodacon-2021-global-virtual/

QUESTIONS

If you have questions regarding this survey, please email us at survey@sodafoundation.io or ask us on Slack at https://sodafoundation.io/slack/

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Interview with Hilary Carter, VP of Linux Foundation Research

Thu, 04/15/2021 - 00:01

Jason Perlow, Director of Project Insights and Editorial Content at the Linux Foundation, spoke with Hilary Carter about Linux Foundation Research and how it will create better awareness of the work being done by open source projects and their communities.

JP: It’s great to have you here today, and also, welcome to the Linux Foundation. First, can you tell me a bit about yourself, where do you live, what your interests are outside work?

HC: Thank you! I’m a Toronto native, but I now live in a little suburban town called Aurora, just north of the city. Mike Meyers — a fellow Canadian — chose “Aurora, IL” for his setting of Wayne’s World, but he really named the town after Aurora, ON. I also spend a lot of time about 3 hours north of Aurora in the Haliburton Highlands, a region noted for its beautiful landscape of rocks, trees, and lakes — and it’s here where my husband and I have a log cabin. We ski, hike and paddle, with our kids, depending on the season. It’s an interesting location because we’re just a few kilometers north of the 45th parallel — and at the spring and fall equinox, the sun sets precisely in the west right off of our dock. At the winter and summer solstice, it’s 45 degrees to the south and north, respectively. It’s neat. As much as I have always been a bit obsessed with geolocation, I had never realized we were smack in the middle of the northern hemisphere until our kids’ use of Snapchat location filters brought it to our attention. Thank you, mobile apps!

JP: And what organization are you joining us from?

HC: My previous role was Managing Director at the Blockchain Research Institute, where I helped launch and administer their research program in 2017. Over nearly four years, we produced more than 100 research projects that explored how blockchain technology — as the so-called Internet of value — was transforming all facets of society — at the government and enterprise-level as well as at the peer-to-peer level. We also explored how blockchain converged with other technologies like IoT, AI, additive manufacturing and how these developments would change traditional business models. It’s a program that is as broad as it is deep into a particular subject matter without being overly technical, and it was an absolutely fascinating and rewarding experience to be part of building that.

JP: Tell me a bit more about your academic background; what disciplines do you feel most influence your research approach?

HC: I was a Political Studies major as an undergrad, which set the stage for my ongoing interest in geopolitical issues and how they influence the economy and society. I loved studying global political systems, international political economy, and supranational organizations and looking at the frameworks built for global collaboration to enable international peace and security under the Bretton Woods system. That program made me feel incredibly fortunate to have been born into a time of relative peace and prosperity, unlike generations before me.

I did my graduate studies in Management at the London School of Economics (LSE), and it was here that I came to learn about the role of technology in business. The technologies we were studying at the time were those that enabled real-time inventory. Advanced manufacturing was “the” hot technology of the mid-1990s, or so it seemed in class. I find it so interesting that the curriculum at the time did not quite reflect the technology that would profoundly and most immediately shape our world, and of course, that was the Web. In fairness, the digital economy was emerging slowly, then. Tasks like loading web pages still took a lot of time, so in a way, it’s understandable that the full extent of the web’s power did not make it into many of my academic lectures and texts. I believe academia is different today — and I’m thrilled to see the LSE at the forefront of new technology research, including blockchain, AI, robotics, big data, preparing students for a digital world.

JP: I did do some stalking of your LinkedIn profile; I see that you also have quite a bit of journalistic experience as well.

HC: I wish I could have had more! I was humbled when my first piece was published in Canada’s national newspaper. I had no formal training or portfolio of past writing to lend credibility to my authorship. Still, fortunately, after much persistence, the editor gave me a shot, and I’m forever grateful to her for that. I was inspired to write opinion pieces on the value of digital tools because I saw a gap that needed filling — and I was really determined to fill it. And the subject that inspired me was leadership around new technologies. I try to be a good storyteller and create something that educates and inspires all in one go. I suppose I come by a bit of that naturally. My father was an award-winning author in Canada, but his day job was Chief of Surgery at a hospital in downtown Toronto. He had a gift to take complex subject matter about diseases, such as cancer, and humanize the content by making it personal. I think that’s what makes writing about complex concepts “sticky.” When you believe that the author is, at some level, personally committed to their work and successful in setting the context for their subject matter to the world at large and do so in a way that creates action or additional thinking, then they’ve done a successful job.

JP: Let’s try a tough existential question. Why do you feel that the Linux Foundation now needs a dedicated research and publications division? Is it an organizational maturity issue? Has open source gotten so widespread and pervasive that we need better metrics to understand these projects’ overall impact?

HC: Well, let me start by saying that I’m delighted that the LF has prioritized research as a new business unit. In my past role at the Blockchain Research Institute, it was clear that there was and still is a huge demand for research — the program kept growing because technologies continued to evolve, and there was no shortage of issues to cover. So I think the LF is tapping into a deep need for knowledge in the market at large and specific insights on open source ecosystems, in particular, to create greater awareness of incredible open source projects and inspire greater participation in them. There are also threats that we as a society — as human beings — need to deal with urgently. So the timing couldn’t be better to broaden the understanding of what is happening in open source communities, new tools to share knowledge, and encourage greater collaboration levels in open source projects. If we accomplish one thing, it will be to illustrate the global context for open source software development and why getting involved in these activities can create positive global change on so many levels. We want more brains in the game.

JP: So let’s dive right into the research itself. You mentioned your blockchain background and your previous role — I take it that this will have some influence on upcoming surveys and analysis? What is coming down the pike on the front?

HC: Blockchain as a technology has undoubtedly influenced my thinking about systems architecture and how research is conducted — both technological frameworks and the human communities that organize around them. Decentralization. Coordination. Transparency. Immutability. Privacy. These are all issues that have been front and center for me these past many years. Part of what I have learned about what makes good blockchain systems work comes from the right combination of great dependability and security with leadership, governance, and high mass collaboration levels. I believe those values transfer over readily to the work of the Linux Foundation and its community. I’m very much looking forward to learning about the many technology ecosystems beyond blockchain currently under the LF umbrella. I’m excited to discover what I imagine will be a new suite of technologies that are not yet part of our consciousness.

JP: What other LF projects and initiatives do you feel need to have deeper dives in understanding their impact besides blockchain? Last year, we published a contributor survey with Harvard. It reached many interesting conclusions about overall motivations for participation and potential areas for remediation or improvement in various organizations. Where do we go further in understanding supply chain security issues — are you working with the Harvard team on any of those things?

HC: The FOSS Contributor Survey was amazing, and there are more good things to come through our collaboration with the Laboratory of Innovation Science at Harvard. Security is a high-priority research issue, and yes, ongoing contributions to this effort from that team will be critical. You can definitely expect a project that dives deep into security issues in software supply chains in the wake of SolarWinds.

I’ve had excellent preliminary discussions with some executive team members about their wish-lists for projects that could become part of the LF Research program in terms of other content. We’ll hope to be as inclusive as we can, based on what our capacity allows. We look forward to exploring topics along industry verticals and technology horizontals, as well as looking at issues that don’t fall neatly into this framework, such as strategies to increase diversity in open source communities, or the role of governance and leadership as a factor in successful adoption of open source projects.

Ultimately, LF Research will have an agenda shaped not only from feedback from within the LF community but by the LF Research Advisory Board, a committee of LF members and other stakeholders who will help shape the agenda and provide support and feedback throughout the program. Through this collaborative effort, I’m confident that LF Research will add new value to our ecosystem and serve as a valuable resource for anyone wanting to learn more about open source software and the communities building it and help them make decisions accordingly. I’m looking forward to our first publications, which we expect out by mid-summer. And I’m most excited to lean on, learn from, and work with such an incredible team as I have found within the LF. Let’s do this!!!

JP: Awesome, Hilary. It was great having you for this talk, and I look forward to the first publications you have in store for us.

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The Linux Foundation launches research division to explore open source ecosystems and impact

Thu, 04/15/2021 - 00:00

Linux Foundation Research will provide objective, decision-useful insights into the scope of open source collaboration

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – April 14, 2021 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced Linux Foundation Research, a new division that will broaden the understanding of open source projects, ecosystem dynamics, and impact, with never before seen insights on the efficacy of open source collaboration as a means to solve many of the world’s pressing problems. Through a series of research projects and related content, Linux Foundation Research will leverage the Linux Foundation’s vast repository of data, tools, and communities across industry verticals and technology horizontals. The methodology will apply quantitative and qualitative techniques to create an unprecedented knowledge network to benefit the global open source community, academia, and industry.

“As we continue in our mission to collectively build the world’s most critical open infrastructure, we can provide a first-of-its-kind research program that leverages the Linux Foundation’s experience, brings our communities together, and can help inform how open source evolves for decades to come,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation. “As we have seen in our previous studies on supply chain security and FOSS contribution, research is an important way to measure the progress of both open source ecosystems and contributor trends. With a dedicated research organization, the Linux Foundation will be better equipped to draw out insights, trends, and context that will inform discussions and decisions around open collaboration.”

As part of the launch, the Linux Foundation is pleased to welcome Hilary Carter, VP Research, to lead this initiative. Hilary most recently led the development and publication of more than 100 enterprise-focused technology research projects for the Blockchain Research Institute. In addition to research project management, Hilary has authored, co-authored, and contributed to reports on blockchain in pandemics, government, enterprise, sustainability, and supply chains.

“The opportunity to measure, analyze, and describe the impact of open source collaborations in a more fulsome way through Linux Foundation Research is inspiring,” says Carter. “Whether we’re exploring the security of digital supply chains or new initiatives to better report on climate risk, the goal of LF Research is to enhance decision-making and encourage collaboration in a vast array of open source projects. It’s not enough to simply describe what’s taking place. It’s about getting to the heart of why open source community initiatives matter to all facets of our society, as a means to get more people — and more organizations — actively involved.”

Critical to the research initiative will be establishing the Linux Foundation Research Advisory Board, a rotating committee of community leaders and subject matter experts, who will collectively influence the program agenda and provide strategic input, oversight, and ongoing support on next-generation issues.

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure, including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

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Linux Foundation Hosts Collaboration Among World’s Largest Insurance Companies

Mon, 04/12/2021 - 21:00

openIDL platform provides a standardized data repository streamlining regulatory reporting and enabling the delivery of next-gen risk and insurance applications

San Francisco, Calif., April 12, 2021 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, and the American Association of Insurance Services (AAIS), today are announcing the launch of OpenIDL, the Open Insurance Data Link platform and project. The platform will reduce the cost of regulatory reporting for insurance carriers, provide a standardized data repository for analytics and a connection point for third parties to deliver new applications to members.

openIDL brings together some of the world’s largest insurance companies, including The Hanover and Selective Insurance Group, along with technology and service providers Chainyard, KatRisk and MOBI to advance a common distributed ledger platform for sharing information and business processes across the insurance ecosystem.

The first use case for the openIDL network is regulatory reporting in the Property and Casualty (P&C) insurance industry. Initially built with guidance from AAIS, a leading insurance advisory organization and statistical reporting agent, openIDL leverages the trust and integrity inherent in distributed ledger networks. The secure platform guarantees to regulators and other insurance industry participants that data is accurate and complete, implemented by a “P&C Reporting Working Group” within the openIDL network.

“From the very beginning, we recognized the enormous transformative potential for openIDL and distributed ledger technology,” said AAIS CEO Ed Kelly. “We are happy to work with the Linux Foundation to help affect meaningful, positive change for the insurance ecosystem.”

Insurance sectors beyond P&C are expected to be supported by openIDL in the coming months, and use cases will expand beyond regulatory. A “Flood Working Group” has already been assembled to develop use case catastrophe modeling in support of insurers and regulators. openIDL is also collaborating on joint software development activities, building upon Hyperledger Fabric, Hadoop, Node.js, MongoDB and other open technologies to implement a “harmonized data store,” enabling data privacy and accountable operations.

The combined packaging of this software is called an “openIDL Node,” approved and certified by developers working on this project, and every member of the network will be running that software in order to participate in the openIDL network. Additional joint software development for analytics and reporting are also included in the openIDL Linux Foundation network.

“We’re delighted to join openIDL with AAIS and the Linux Foundation. It is strategically important for Selective to be part of industry efforts to innovate our regulatory reporting and use distributed ledgers,” said Michael H. Lanza, executive vice president, general counsel & chief compliance officer of Selective Insurance Group, Inc.

openIDL is a Linux Foundation “Open Governance Network.” These networks comprise nodes run by many different organizations, bound by a shared distributed ledger that provides an industry utility platform for recording transactions and automating business processes. It leverages open source code and community governance for objective transparency and accountability among participants. The network and the node software are built using open source development practices and principles managed by the Linux Foundation in a manner that enterprises can trust.

“AAIS, and the insurance industry in general, are trailblazers in their contribution and collaboration to these technologies,” said Mike Dolan, senior vice president and general manager of Projects at the Linux Foundation. “Open governance networks like openIDL can now accelerate innovation and development of new product and service offerings for insurance providers and their customers. We’re excited to host this work.”

As an open source project, all software source code developed will be licensed under an OSI-approved open source license, and all interface specifications developed will be published under an open specification license. And all technical discussions between participants will take place publicly, further enhancing the ability to expand the network to include other participants. As with an openly accessible network, organizations can develop their own proprietary applications and infrastructure integrations.

Additional Members & Partner Statements

Chainyard

“Chainyard is pleased to join the OpenIDL initiative as an infrastructure member,” said Isaac Kunkel, Chainyard SVP Consulting Services. “Blockchain is a team sport and with the openIDL platform, companies, regulators and vendors are forming an ecosystem to collaborate on common issues for the betterment of the insurance industry. The entire industry will benefit through more accurate data and better decision making.”

KatRisk

“The openIDL platform will serve to increase access to state of the art catastrophe modelling data from KatRisk and others, serving to reduce the friction required to house and run said models. KatRisk expects all parties, from direct insurance entities to regulators, to see an increase in data quality, reliability and ease of access as catastrophe modelling output is effectively streamed across OpenIDL nodes to generate automated reports and add to or create internal business intelligence databases. If catastrophe models are about owning your own risk, then the OpenIDL platform is an effective tool to better understand and manage that risk,” said Brandon Katz, executive vice president, member, KatRisk.

MOBI

“The Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI) is delighted to join with the Linux Foundation, AAIS, and insurance industry leaders in founding OpenIDL. Data sharing and digital collaboration in business ecosystems via industry consortium ledgers like OpenIDL will drive competitive advantage for many years to come,” said Chris Ballinger, founder and CEO, MOBI.

For more information, please visit www.openidl.org

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

ABOUT AAIS

Established in 1936, AAIS serves the property casualty insurance industry as the modern, Member-based advisory organization. AAIS delivers custom advisory solutions, including best-in-class forms, rating information and data management capabilities for commercial lines, inland marine, farm & agriculture, commercial auto, personal auto, and homeowners insurers. Its consultative approach, unrivaled customer service and modern technical capabilities underscore a focused commitment to the success of its Members. For more information about AAIS, please visit www.AAISonline.com.

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The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact
Jennifer Cloer for Linux Foundation
503-867-2304
jennifer@storychangesculture.com

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The Linux Foundation Hosts Project to Decentralize and Accelerate Drug Development for Rare Genetic Diseases

Wed, 03/31/2021 - 23:00

OpenTreatments and RareCamp creator Sanath Kumar Ramesh built the project to address his son’s rare disease, now that work will be available to all in an effort to accelerate treatments

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 31, 2021 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, and the OpenTreatments Foundation, which enables treatments for rare genetic diseases regardless of rarity and geography, today announced the RareCamp software project will be hosted at the Linux Foundation. The Project will provide the source code and open governance for the OpenTreatments software platform to enable patients to create gene therapies for rare genetic diseases.

The project is supported by individual contributors, as well as collaborations from companies that include Baylor College of Medicine, Castle IRB, Charles River, Columbus Children’s Foundation, GlobalGenes, Odylia Therapeutics, RARE-X and Turing.com.

“OpenTreatments and RareCamp decentralize drug development and empowers patients, families and other motivated individuals to create treatments for diseases they care about. We will enable the hand off of these therapies to commercial, governmental and philanthropic entities to ensure patients around the world get access to the therapies for the years to come,” said Sanath Kumar Ramesh, founder of the OpenTreatments Foundation and creator of RareCamp.

There are 400 million patients worldwide affected by more than 7,000 rare diseases, yet treatments for rare genetic diseases are an underserved area. More than 95 percent of rare diseases do not have an approved treatment, and new treatments are estimated to cost more than $1 billion.

“If it’s not yet commercially viable to create treatments for rare diseases, we will take this work into our own hands with open source software and community collaboration is the way we can do it,” said Ramesh.

The RareCamp open source project provides open governance for the software and scientific community to collaborate and create the software tools to aid in the creation of treatments for rare diseases. The community includes software engineers, UX designers, content writers and scientists who are collaborating now to build the software that will power the OpenTreatments platform. The project uses the open source Javascript framework NextJS for frontend and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Serverless stack – including AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon DynamoDB – to power the backend. The project uses the open source toolchain Serverless Framework to develop and deploy the software. The project is licensed under Apache 2.0 and available for anyone to use.

“OpenTreatments and RareCamp really demonstrate how technology and collaboration can have an impact on human life,” said Brett Andrews, RareCamp contributor and software engineer at Vendia. “Sanath’s vision is fueled with love for his son, technical savvy and the desire to share what he’s learning with others who can benefit. Contributing to this project was an easy decision.”

“OpenTreatments Foundation and RareCamp really represent exactly why open source and collaboration are so powerful – because they allow all of us to do more together than any one of us,” said Mike Dolan, executive vice president and GM of Projects at the Linux Foundation. “We’re honored to be able to support this community and are both confident and inspired about its impact on human lives.”

For more information and to contribute, please visit: OpenTreatments.org

About OpenTreatments Foundation

OpenTreatments Foundation’s mission is to enable treatments for all genetic diseases regardless of rarity and geography. Through the OpenTreatments software platform, patient-led organizations get access to a robust roadmap, people, and infrastructure necessary to build a gene therapy program. The software platform offers project management capabilities to manage the program while reducing time and money necessary for the development. For more information, please visit: OpenTreatments.org

About the Linux Foundation

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Media Contact

Jennifer Cloer
for the OpenTreatements Foundation
and Linux Foundation
503-867-2304
jennifer@storychangesculture.com

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LF Networking Announces New Member Walmart, Bolsters a New Era of Enterprise Open Source Networking

Wed, 03/31/2021 - 23:00

Participation by the fortune 1 enterprise brings technical leadership and unprecedented scale to LFN projects across Network Management & Automation
Koby Avital, EVP of Technology Platforms, Walmart Global Tech, joins the Governing Board as LFN Platinum member
Community Growth signals ecosystem commitment to leverage open source for collaborative network transformation across Cloud, Enterprise and Service Provider Ecosystems.

SAN FRANCISCO– March 31, 2021 – LF Networking (LFN), the de-facto collaboration ecosystem for Open Source Networking projects, today announced that Walmart has joined as a Platinum member. Walmart is the first retail member of LFN and joins 21 other global organizations as Platinum members all working to accelerate open source networking.

“We are thrilled to welcome Walmart to the LF Networking community,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, at the Linux Foundation. “As the world’s largest retailer, Walmart brings expertise across a broad swath of areas, including retail point of sale networking, enterprise IT, and hybrid cloud deployments. We look forward to collaborative efforts that accelerate the open source networking community.”

“I’m excited to join the Linux Foundation Governing Board on behalf of Walmart,” said Koby Avital, Executive Vice President, Walmart Global Tech. “By joining LFN, Walmart has the opportunity to contribute, influence the cloud growth and better support the enterprise and service provider communities by open-sourcing innovative technologies across its retail infrastructure.”

Join the LF Networking community October 11-12 for Open Networking and Edge Summit (ONES), the industry’s premier open networking event, expanded to comprehensively cover Edge Computing, Edge Cloud & IoT. ONES North America enables collaborative development and innovation across enterprises, service providers/telcos and cloud providers to shape the future of networking and edge computing. Details here: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/open-networking-edge-summit-north-america/.

About the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and industry adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

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Linux Foundation Will Host AsyncAPI to Support Growth and Collaboration for Industry’s Fastest-Growing API Spec

Tue, 03/30/2021 - 23:00

The open specification for defining asynchronous APIs gains momentum, seeks neutral home for open governance, community growth and industry adoption

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 30, 2021 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it will host the AsyncAPI Initiative. AsyncAPI is a specification and a suite of open source tools that work with asynchronous APIs and event-driven architectures. It is the fastest-growing API specification according to a recent developer survey, tripling in production usage from 2019 to 2020.

Founding sponsors of the AsyncAPI Initiative include Ably Realtime, Apideck, Bump, IQVIA Technologies, Slack, Solace, and TIBCO, and AsyncAPI recently announced a partnership with Postman. Today, AsyncAPI is in production at Adidas, PayPal, Salesforce, SAP, and Slack, among other enterprise environments.

“As the growth of AsyncAPI skyrocketed, it became clear to us that we needed to find a neutral, trusted home for its ongoing development. The Linux Foundation is without question the leader in bringing together interested communities to advance technology and accelerate adoption in an open way,” said Fran Méndez, who created AsyncAPI in 2016. “This natural next step for the project really represents the maturity and strength of AsyncAPI. We expect the open governance model architected and standardized by the Linux Foundation will ensure the initiative continues to thrive.”

AsyncAPI helps unify documentation automation and code generation, as well as managing, testing, and monitoring asynchronous APIs. It provides language for describing the interface of event-driven systems regardless of the underlying technology and supports the full development cycle of event-driven architecture. AsyncAPI is considered a sister project of the OpenAPI Initiative, which is focused on synchronous REST communication and is also hosted by the Linux Foundation.

“The Linux Foundation is pleased to provide a forum where individuals and organizations can come together to advance AsyncAPI and nurture collaboration in a neutral forum that can support the kind of growth this community is experiencing,” said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO and Vice President, Developer Relations at the Linux Foundation.

For more information, please visit: https://www.asyncapi.org

Supporting Quotes

Łukasz Górnicki, AsyncAPI

“AsyncAPI at Linux Foundation is another brick needed to build a solid and sustainable community for the project. We are securing a perimeter for AsyncAPI and can focus on expanding the vision of making all the specs work together for the user’s good.”

Bill Doerrfeld, NordicAPIs

“Open standards are only as strong as their community effort. The details of the AsyncAPI charter represent their ongoing community mission and goal to retain vendor neutrality around the format. AsyncAPI is taking an active role in enacting this by limiting company representation per TSC, privileging work over money, and other strategies.”

Kin Lane, Postman

“AsyncAPI joining the Linux Foundation is the final cornerstone in the foundation of the open source event-driven API specification. This creates solid groundwork for defining the next generation of API infrastructure, beginning with HTTP request and response APIs, but also event-driven approaches spanning multiple protocols and patterns including Kafka, GraphQL, MQTT, AMQP, and much more. And all of that, in turn, will provide what is needed to power documentation, mocking, testing, and other critical stops along a modern enterprise API lifecycle.”

Matt McLarty, Salesforce

“Seeing how AsyncAPI has blossomed has been incredible. Its progress has been guided by two key principles in my opinion: a focus on solving real world problems, and a focus on community. As the world of synchronous APIs and event-based communication converges, AsyncAPI plays a vital role in levelling the API playing field.”

About the Linux Foundation

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Media Contact

Jennifer Cloer
for Linux Foundation
503-867-2304
jennifer@storychangesculture.com

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The Linux Foundation and the TODO Group Announce Call for Proposals for OSPOCon and the OSPO Landscape

Wed, 03/24/2021 - 03:52

OSPOCon is an event dedicated to creating better, more efficient open source ecosystems.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 23, 2020 — The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, along with co-host the TODO Group, an open group of organizations who collaborate on practices, tools and other ways to run successful and effective open source programs and projects, has opened its Call for Proposals for OSPOCon. The event will take place September 29 – October 1 in Dublin, Ireland, alongside Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference 2021. The TODO Group has also launched an OSPO Landscape as a resource for the community to learn more about OSPOs. The community is encouraged to contribute to the landscape.

OSPOCon is a new event, dedicated to those working to create a center of competency for open source in their organizations in order to join together to overcome challenges through sharing experiences, best practices, and tooling. Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) face many obstacles, such as ensuring high-quality and frequent releases, engaging with developer communities, and contributing back to other projects effectively. Collaborating together with others working on the same concerns helps the entire ecosystem improve.

“I am thrilled to be a part of the inaugural OSPOCon and see it brought to life to support the many hardworking and dedicated people involved in creating and sustaining OSPOs,” said Chris Aniszczyk, co-founder of the TODO Group and CTO at The Linux Foundation. “The impact OSPOs are having grows every day as they become a strategic function for organizations, from companies to governments to research institutions. Their contributions are tremendously valued and we look forward to furthering their abilities to collaborate, grow, and learn from each other.”

Proposals to speak at OSPOCon are being accepted now through June 13 at 11:59pm PDT.

Submission types requested include:

Session Presentation (~40-50 minutes in length)
Panel Discussion (~40-50 minutes in length)
Birds of a Feather Session (BoFs are typically held in the evenings, (~45 minutes – 1 hour in length)
Tutorial (~1.5 hours in length)
Lightning Talk (~5-10 minutes in length)

Suggested Topics include:

Open Source Program Management

Creation and Best Practices of Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs)
Consuming and Contributing to Open Source
Managing Competing Corporate Interests while Driving Coherent Communities
How to Vet the Viability of OS Projects
Internal vs External Developer Adoption
Handling License Obligations in Organizations
Open Source Corporate Sustainability

All interested parties are welcome to submit proposals. Those submitting will be notified of a decision by Thursday, July 22. To learn more and/or submit, please click here.

OSPOCon will be presented as a hybrid event – attendees can join and participate in person or virtually. Registration will open in late Spring 2021. To receive an email alert when registration opens, please click here. The Linux Foundation provides diversity and need-based registration scholarships for this event to anyone that needs it; for information on eligibility please click here. Visit our website and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn for all the latest event updates and announcements.

Sponsor:
OSPOCon offers two sponsorship levels for your consideration, Co-host and Supporter. To see all sponsorship benefits, please click here or email us here.

Members of the press who would like to request a media pass should contact Kristin O’Connell.

About The Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and industry adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation Events are where the world’s leading technologists meet, collaborate, learn and network in order to advance innovations that support the world’s largest shared technologies.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

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Media Contact:
Kristin O’Connell
The Linux Foundation
koconnell@linuxfoundation.org

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Liquid Prep intelligent watering solution now hosted by the Linux Foundation as a Call for Code project

Mon, 03/22/2021 - 21:00

Over the past several decades farmers have been depending increasingly on groundwater to irrigate their crops due to climate change and reduced rainfall. Farmers, even in drought-prone areas, continue to need to grow water-intensive crops because these crops have a steady demand.

In 2019, as part of Call for Code, a team of IBMers came together and brainstormed on ideas they were passionate about – problems faced by farmers in developing countries due to more frequent drought conditions. The team designed an end-to-end solution that focuses on helping farmers gain insight into when to water their crops and help them optimize their water usage to grow healthy crops. This team, Liquid Prep, went on to win the IBM employee Call for Code Global Challenge.

Liquid Prep provides a mobile application that can obtain soil moisture data from a portable soil moisture sensor, fetch weather information from The Weather Company, and access crop data through a service deployed on the IBM Cloud. Their solution brings all this data together, analyzes it, and computes watering guidance to help the farmer decide whether to water their crops right now or conserve it for a better time.

To validate the Liquid Prep prototype, in December 2019, one of the team members traveled to India and interviewed several farmers in the village Nuggehalli, which is near the town Hirisave in the Hassan district of Karnataka, India. The interviews taught the team that the farmers did not have detailed information on when they should water their specific crops and by how much, as they didn’t know the specific needs on a plant-by-plant basis. They also just let the water run freely if the water was available from a nearby source, like a river or stream, and some were entirely dependent on rainfall. The farmers expressed a great interest in the described Liquid Prep solution as it could empower them to make more informed decisions that could improve yields.

A prototype is born

After winning the challenge the Liquid Prep team took on the opportunity to convert the concept to a more complete prototype through an IBM Service Corps engagement. The team was expanded with dedicated IBM volunteers from across the company and they were assigned to optimize Liquid Prep from August through October 2020. During this time the team developed the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the mobile solution.

The prototype consists of three primary components:

A hardware sensor to measure soil moisture
A highly visual and easy-to-use mobile web application, and
A back-end data service to power the app.

It works like this: the mobile web application gets soil moisture data from the soil moisture sensor. The app requests environmental conditions from The Weather Company and crop data from the plant database via the backend service deployed on the IBM Cloud. The app analyzes and computes a watering schedule to help the farmer decide if they should water their crops now or at a later time.

Partners

Liquid Prep has a developed a great working relationship with partners SmartCone Technologies, Inc., and Central New Mexico Community College. Students in the Deep Dive Coding Internet of Things (IoT) Bootcamp at CNM are designing, developing, and producing a robust IoT sensor and housing it in the shape of a stick that can be inserted into the soil and transfer the soil moisture data to the Liquid Prep mobile app via Bluetooth. The collaboration gives students important real-world experience before they enter the workforce.

“SmartCone is honored to be part of this project. This is a perfect example of technology teams working together to help make the world a better place, “ said Jason Lee, Founder & CEO, SmartCone Technologies Inc.

Additionally, Liquid Prep will work together with J&H Nixon Farms, who largely grow soybeans and corn crops on about 2800 acres of agricultural land in Ottawa, Canada. They have offered Liquid Prep the opportunity to pilot test the prototype on several plots of land that have different soil conditions, which in turn can expand the breadth of recommendation options to a larger number of potential users.

Now available as open source

Liquid Prep is now available as an open source project hosted by the Linux Foundation. The goal of the project is to help farmers globally farm their crops with the least amount of water by taking advantage of real-time information that can help improve sustainability and build resiliency to climate change.

Participation is welcomed from software developers, designers, testers, agronomists/agri experts/soil experts, IoT engineers, researchers, students, farmers, and others that can help improve the quality and value of the solution for small farmers around the world. Key areas the team are interested in developing include localizing the mobile app, considering soil properties for the improvement of the watering advice, updating project documentation, software and hardware testing, more in-depth research, and adding more crop data to the database.

Get involved in Liquid Prep now at Call For Code

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Linux Foundation Support for Asian Communities

Fri, 03/19/2021 - 08:00

The Linux Foundation and its communities are deeply concerned about the rise in attacks against Asian Americans and condemn this violence. It is devastating to hear over and over again of the attacks and vitriol against Asian communities, which have increased substantially during the pandemic.

We stand in support with all those that have experienced this hate, and to the families of those who have been killed as a result. Racism, intolerance and inequality have no place in the world, our country, the tech industry or in open source communities.

We firmly believe that we are all at our best when we work together, treat each other with respect and equality and without hate or vitriol.

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Generating a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) with Open Source Standards and Tooling

Tue, 03/16/2021 - 21:00

Every month there seems to be a new software vulnerability showing up on social media, which causes open source program offices and security teams to start querying their inventories to see how FOSS components they use may impact their organizations.

Frequently this information is not available in a consistent format within an organization for automatic querying and may result in a significant amount of email and manual effort. By exchanging software metadata in a standardized software bill of materials (SBOM) format between organizations, automation within an organization becomes simpler, accelerating the discovery process and uncovering risk so that mitigations can be considered quickly.

In the last year, we’ve also seen standards like OpenChain (ISO/IEC 5320:2020) gain adoption in the supply chain. Customers have started asking for a bill of materials from their suppliers as part of negotiation and contract discussions to conform to the standard. OpenChain has a focus on ensuring that there is sufficient information for license compliance, and as a result, expects metadata for the distributed components as well. A software bill of materials can be used to support the systematic review and approval of each component’s license terms to clarify the obligations and restrictions as it applies to the distribution of the supplied software and reduces risk.

Kate Stewart, VP, Dependable Embedded Systems, The Linux Foundation, will host a complimentary mentorship webinar entitled Generating Software Bill Of Materials on Thursday, March 25 at 7:30 am PST. This session will work through the minimum elements included in a software bill of materials and detail the reasoning behind why those elements are included. To register, please click here.

There are many ways this software metadata can be shared. The common SBOM document format options (SPDX, SWID, and CycloneDX) will be reviewed so that the participants can better understand what is available for those just starting.

This mentorship session will work through some simple examples and then guide where to find the next level of details and further references.

At the end of this session, participants will be on a secure footing and a path towards the automated generation of SBOMs as part of their build and release processes in the future.

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How open source communities are driving 5G’s future, even within a large government like the US

Fri, 03/12/2021 - 01:00

In mid-February, the Linux Foundation announced it had signed a collaboration agreement with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), enabling US Government suppliers to collaborate on a common open source platform that will enable the adoption of 5G wireless and edge technologies by the government. Governments face similar issues to enterprise end-users — if all their suppliers deliver incompatible solutions, the integration burden escalates exponentially.

The first collaboration, Open Programmable Secure 5G (OPS-5G), currently in the formative stages, will be used to create open source software and systems enabling end-to-end 5G and follow-on mobile networks.

The road to open source influencing 5G: The First, Second, and Third Waves of Open Source

If we examine the history of open source, it is informative to observe it from the perspective of evolutionary waves. Many open-source projects began as single technical projects, with specific objectives, such as building an operating system kernel or an application. This isolated, single project approach can be viewed as the first wave of open source.

We can view the second wave of open source as creating platforms seeking to address a broad horizontal solution, such as a cloud or networking stack or a machine learning and data platform.

The third wave of open source collaboration goes beyond isolated projects and integrates them for a common platform for a specific industry vertical. Additionally, the third wave often focuses on reducing fragmentation — you commonly will see a conformance program or a specification or standard that anyone in the industry can cite in procurement contracts.

Industry conformance becomes important as specific solutions are taken to market and how cross-industry solutions are being built — especially now that we have technologies requiring cross-industry interaction, such as end-to-end 5G, the edge, or even cloud-native applications and environments that span any industry vertical.

The third wave of open source also seeks to provide comprehensive end-to-end solutions for enterprises and verticals, large institutional organizations, and government agencies. In this case, the community of government suppliers will be building an open source 5G stack used in enterprise networking applications. The end-to-end open source integration and collaboration supported by commercial investment with innovative products, services, and solutions accelerate the technology adoption and transformation.

Why DARPA chose to partner with the Linux Foundation

DARPA at the US Department of Defense has tens of thousands of contractors supplying networking solutions for government facilities and remote locations. However, it doesn’t want dozens, hundreds, or thousands of unique and incompatible hardware and software solutions originating from its large contractor and supplier ecosystem. Instead, it desires a portable and open access standard to provide transparency to enable advanced software tools and systems to be applied to a common code base various groups in the government could build on. The goal is to have a common framework that decouples hardware and software requirements and enabling adoption by more groups within the government.

Naturally, as a large end-user, the government wants its suppliers to focus on delivering secure solutions. A common framework can ideally decrease the security complexity versus having disparate, fragmented systems.

The Linux Foundation is also the home of nearly all the important open source projects in the 5G and networking space. Out of the $54B of the Linux Foundation community software projects that have been valued using the COCOMO2 model, the open source projects assisting with building a 5G stack are estimated to be worth about $25B in shared technology investment. The LF Networking projects have been valued at $7.4B just by themselves.

The support programs at Linux Foundation provide the key foundations for a shared community innovations pool. These programs include IP structure and legal frameworks, an open and transparent development process, neutral governance, conformance, and DevOps infrastructure for end-to-end project lifecycle and code management. Therefore, it is uniquely suited to be the home for a community-driven effort to define an open source 5G end-to-end architecture, create and run the open source projects that embody that architecture, and support its integration for scaling-out and accelerating adoption.

The foundations of a complete open source 5G stack

The Linux Foundation worked in the telecommunications industry early on in its existence, starting with the Carrier Grade Linux initiatives to identify requirements and building features to enable the Linux kernel to address telco requirements. In 2013, The Linux Foundation’s open source networking platform started with bespoke projects such as OpenDaylight, the software-defined networking controller. OPNFV (now Anuket), the network function virtualization stack, was introduced in 2014-2015, followed by the first release of Tungsten Fabric, the automated software-defined networking stack. FD.io, the secure networking data plane, was announced in 2016, a sister project of the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) released into open source in 2010.

Linux Foundation & Other Open Source Component Projects for 5G

At the time, the telecom/network and wireless carrier industry sought to commoditize and accelerate innovation across a specific piece of the stack as software-defined networking became part of their digital transformation. Since the introduction of these projects at LFN, the industry has seen heavy adoption and significant community contribution by the largest telecom carriers and service providers worldwide. This history is chronicled in detail in our whitepaper, Software-Defined Vertical Industries: Transformation Through Open Source.

The work that the member companies will focus on will require robust frameworks for ensuring changes to these projects are contributed back upstream into the source projects. Upstreaming, which is a key benefit to open source collaboration, allows the contributions specific to this 5G effort to roll back into their originating projects, thus improving the software for every end-user and effort that uses them.

The Linux Foundation networking stack continues to evolve and expand into additional projects due to an increased desire to innovate and commoditize across key technology areas through shared investments among its members. In February of 2021, Facebook contributed the Magma project, which transcends platform infrastructure such as the others listed above. Instead, it is a network function application that is core to 5G network operations.

The E2E 5G Super Blueprint is being developed by the LFN Demo working group. This is an open collaboration and we encourage you to join us. Learn more here

Building through organic growth and cross-pollination of the open source networking and cloud community

Tier 2 operators, rural operators, and governments worldwide want to reap the benefits of economic innovation as well as potential cost-savings from 5G. How is this accomplished?

With this joint announcement and its DARPA supplier community collaboration, the Linux Foundation’s existing projects can help serve the requirements of other large end-users. Open source communities are advancing and innovating some of the most important and exciting technologies of our time. It’s always interesting to have an opportunity to apply the results of these communities to new use cases.

The Linux Foundation understands the critical dynamic of cross-pollination between community-driven open source projects needed to help make an ecosystem successful. Its proven governance model has demonstrated the ability to maintain and mature open source projects over time and make them all work together in one single, cohesive ecosystem.

As a broad set of contributors work on components of an open source stack for 5G, there will be cross-community interactions. For example, that means that Project EVE, the cloud-native edge computing platform, will potentially be working with Project Zephyr, the scalable real-time operating system (RTOS) kernel, so that Eve can potentially orchestrate Zephyr devices. It’s all based on contributors’ self-interests and motivations to contribute functionality that enables these projects to work together. Similarly, ONAP, the network automation/orchestration platform, is tightly integrated with Akraino so that it has architectural deployment templates built around network edge clouds and multi-edge clouds.

An open source platform has implications not just for new business opportunities for government suppliers but also for other institutions. The projects within an open source platform have open interfaces that can be integrated and used with other software so that other large end-users like the World Bank, can have validated and tested architectural blueprints, with which can go ahead and deploy effective 5G solutions in the marketplace in many host countries, providing them a turnkey stack. This will enable them to encourage providers through competition or challenges native to their in-country commercial ecosystem to implement those networks.

This is a true solutions-oriented open source for 5G stack for enterprises, governments, and the world.

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New open source project helps musicians jam together even when they’re not together

Thu, 03/11/2021 - 22:00

Today, the Linux Foundation announced that it would be adding Rend-o-matic to the list of Call for Code open source projects that it hosts. The Rend-o-matic technology was originally developed as part of the Choirless project during a Call for Code challenge as a way to enable musicians to jam together regardless of where they are. Initially developed to help musicians socially distance because of COVID 19, the application has many other benefits, including bringing together musicians from different parts of the world and allowing for multiple versions of a piece of music featuring various artist collaborations. The artificial intelligence powering Choirless ensures that the consolidated recording stays accurately synchronized even through long compositions, and this is just one of the pieces of software being released under the new Rend-o-matic project.

Developer Diaries – Uniting musicians with AI and IBM Cloud Functions

Created by a team of musically-inclined IBM developers, the Rend-o-matic project features a web-based interface that allows artists to record their individual segments via a laptop or phone. The individual segments are processed using acoustic analysis and AI to identify common patterns across multiple segments which are then automatically synced and output as a single track. Each musician can record on their own time in their own place with each new version of the song available as a fresh MP3 track. In order to scale the compute needed by the AI, the application uses IBM Cloud Functions in a serverless environment that can effortlessly scale up or down to meet demand without the need for additional infrastructure updates. Rend-o-matic is itself built upon open source technology, using Apache OpenWhisk, Apache CouchDB, Cloud Foundry, Docker, Python, Node.js, and FFmpeg.

Since its creation, Choirless has been incubated and improved as a Call for Code project, with an enhanced algorithm, increased availability, real-time audio-level visualizations, and more. The solution has been released for testing, and as of January, users of the hosted Choirless service built upon the Rend-o-matic project – including school choirs, professional musicians, and bands – have recorded 2,740 individual parts forming 745 distinct performances.

Call for Code invites developers and problem-solvers around the world to build and contribute to sustainable, open source technology projects that address social and humanitarian issues while ensuring the top solutions are deployed to make a demonstrable difference. Learn more about Call for Code. You can learn more about Rend-o-matic, sample the technology, and contribute back to the project at https://choirless.github.io/

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LF Edge’s State of the Edge 2021 Report Predicts Global Edge Computing Infrastructure Market to be Worth Up to $800 Billion by 2028

Thu, 03/11/2021 - 00:00

COVID-19 highlighted that expertise in legacy data centers could be obsolete in the next few years as the pandemic forced the development of new tools enabled by edge computing for remote monitoring, provisioning, repair and management.
Open source hardware and software projects are driving innovation at the edge by accelerating the adoption and deployment of applications for cloud-native, containerized and distributed applications.
The LF Edge taxonomy, which offers terminology standardization with a balanced view of the edge landscape, is based on inherent technical and logistical trade offs spanning the edge to cloud continuum is gaining widespread industry adoption.
Seven out of 10 areas of edge computing experienced growth in 2020 with a number of new use cases that are driven by 5G.

SAN FRANCISCO – March 10, 2020 – State of the Edge , a project under the LF Edge umbrella organization that established an open, interoperable framework for edge independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, today announced the release of the 4th annual, State of the Edge 2021 Report. The market and ecosystem report for edge computing shares insight and predictions on how the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the status quo, how new types of critical infrastructure have emerged to service the next-level requirements, and open source collaboration as the only way to efficiently scale Edge Infrastructure.

Tolaga Research, which led the market forecasting research for this report, predicts that between 2019 and 2028, cumulative capital expenditures of up to $800 billion USD will be spent on new and replacement IT server equipment and edge computing facilities. These expenditures will be relatively evenly split between equipment for the device and infrastructure edges.

“Our 2021 analysis shows demand for edge infrastructure accelerating in a post COVID-19 world,” said Matt Trifiro, co-chair of State of the Edge and CMO of edge infrastructure company Vapor IO. “We’ve been observing this trend unfold in real-time as companies re-prioritize their digital transformation efforts to account for a more distributed workforce and a heightened need for automation. The new digital norms created in response to the pandemic will be permanent. This will intensify the deployment of new technologies like wireless 5G and autonomous vehicles, but will also impact nearly every sector of the economy, from industrial manufacturing to healthcare.”

The pandemic is accelerating digital transformation and service adoption.

Government lockdowns, social distancing and fragile supply chains had both consumers and enterprises using digital solutions last year that will permanently change the use cases across the spectrum. Expertise in legacy data centers could be obsolete in the next few years as the pandemic has forced the development of tools for remote monitoring, provisioning, repair and management, which will reduce the cost of edge computing. Some of the areas experiencing growth in the Global Infrastructure Edge Power are automotive, smart grid and enterprise technology. As businesses began spending more on edge computing, specific use cases increased including:

Manufacturing increased from 3.9 to 6.2 percent, as companies bolster their supply chain and inventory management capabilities and capitalize on automation technologies and autonomous systems.
Healthcare, which increased from 6.8 to 8.6 percent, was buoyed by increased expectations for remote healthcare, digital data management and assisted living.
Smart cities increased from 5.0 to 6.1 percent in anticipation of increased expenditures in digital infrastructure in the areas such as surveillance, public safety, city services and autonomous systems.

“In our individual lock-down environments, each of us is an edge node of the Internet and all our computing is, mostly, edge computing,” said Wenjing Chu, senior director of Open Source and Research at Futurewei Technologies, Inc. and LF Edge Governing Board member. “The edge is the center of everything.”

Open Source is driving innovation at the edge by accelerating the adoption and deployment of edge applications.

Open Source has always been the foundation of innovation and this became more prevalent during the pandemic as individuals continued to turn to these communities for normalcy and collaboration. LF Edge, which hosts nine projects including State of the Edge, is an important driver of standards for the telecommunications, cloud and IoT edge. Each project collaborates individually and together to create an open infrastructure that creates an ecosystem of support. LF Edge’s projects (Akraino Edge Stack, Baetyl, EdgeX Foundry, Fledge, Home Edge, Open Horizon, Project EVE, and Secure Device Onboard) support emerging edge applications across areas such as non-traditional video and connected things that require lower latency, and faster processing and mobility.

“State of the Edge is shaping the future of all facets of just edge computing and the ecosystem that surrounds it,” said Arpit Joshipura, General Manager of Networking, IoT and Edge. “The insights in the report reflect the entire LF Edge community and our mission to unify edge computing and support a more robust solution at the IoT, Enterprise, Cloud and Telco edge. We look forward to sharing the ongoing work State of the Edge that amplifies innovations across the entire landscape.”

Other report highlights and methodology

For the report, researchers modeled the growth of edge infrastructure from the bottom up, starting with the sector-by-sector use cases likely to drive demand. The forecast considers 43 use cases spanning 11 verticals in calculating the growth, including those represented by smart grids, telecom, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, automotive and mobile consumer services. The vendor-neutral report was edited by Charlie Ashton, Senior Director of Business Development at Napatech, with contributions from Phil Marshall, Chief Research officer at Tolaga Research; Phil Shih, Founder and Managing Director of Structure Research; Technology Journalists Mary Branscombe and Simon Bisson; and Fay Arjomandi, Founder and CEO of mimik. Other highlights from the State of the Edge 2021 Report include:

Off-the-shelf services and applications are emerging that accelerate and de-risk the rapid deployment of edge in these segments. The variety of emerging use cases is in turn driving a diversity in edge-focused processor platforms, which now include Arm-based solutions, SmartNICs with FPGA-based workload acceleration and GPUs.
Edge facilities will also create new types of interconnection. Similar to how data centers became meeting points for networks, the micro data centers at wireless towers and cable headends that will power edge computing often sit at the crossroads of terrestrial connectivity paths. These locations will become centers of gravity for local interconnection and edge exchange, creating new and newly efficient paths for data.
5G, next-generation SD-WAN and SASE have been standardized. They are well suited to address the multitude of edge computing use cases that are being adopted and are contemplated for the future. As digital services proliferate and drive demand for edge computing, the diversity of network performance requirements will continue to increase.

“The State of the Edge report is an important industry and community resource. This year’s report features the analysis of diverse experts, mirroring the collaborative approach that we see thriving in the edge computing ecosystem,” said Jacob Smith, co-chair of State of the Edge and Vice President of Bare Metal at Equinix. “The 2020 findings underscore the tremendous acceleration of digital transformation efforts in response to the pandemic, and the critical interplay of hardware, software and networks for servicing use cases at the edge.”

Download Report

Download the report here.

State of the Edge Co-Chairs Matt Trifiro and Jacob Smith, VP Bare Metal Strategy & Marketing of Equinix, will present highlights from the report in a keynote presentation at Open Networking & Edge Executive Forum, a virtual conference on March 10-12. Register here ($50 US) to watch the live presentation on March 12 at 7 am PT or access the video on-demand.

Trifiro and Smith will also host an LF Edge webinar to showcase the key findings on March 18 at 8 am PT. Register here.

About The Linux Foundation

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The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact:

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Industry-Wide Initiative to Support Open Source Security Gains New Commitments

Wed, 03/10/2021 - 01:00

Open Source Security Foundation adds new members, Citi, Comcast, DevSamurai, HPE, Mirantis and Snyk

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 9, 2021 – OpenSSF, a cross-industry collaboration to secure the open source ecosystem, today announced new membership commitments to advance open source security education and best practices. New members include Citi, Comcast, DevSamurai, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Mirantis, and Snyk.

Open source software (OSS) has become pervasive in data centers, consumer devices and services, representing its value among technologists and businesses alike. Because of its development process, open source has a chain of contributors and dependencies before it ultimately reaches its end users. It is important that those responsible for their user or organization’s security are able to understand and verify the security of this dependency supply chain.

“Open source software is embedded in the world’s technology infrastructure and warrants our dedication to ensuring its security,” said Kay Williams, Governing Board Chair, OpenSSF, and Supply Chain Security Lead, Azure Office of the CTO, Microsoft. “We welcome the latest OpenSSF new members and applaud their commitment to advancing supply chain security for open source software and its technology and business ecosystem.”

The OpenSSF is a cross-industry collaboration that brings together technology leaders to improve the security of OSS. Its vision is to create a future where participants in the open source ecosystem use and share high quality software, with security handled proactively, by default, and as a matter of course. Its working groups include Securing Critical Projects, Security Tooling, Identifying Security Threats, Vulnerability Disclosures, Digital Identity Attestation, and Best Practices.

OpenSSF has more than 35 members and associate members contributing to working groups, technical initiatives and governing board and helping to advance open source security best practices. For more information on founding and new members, please visit: https://openssf.org/about/members/

Membership is not required to participate in the OpenSSF. For more information and to learn how to get involved, including information about participating in working groups and advisory forums, please visit https://openssf.org/getinvolved.

New Member Comments

Citi

“Working with the open source community is a key component in our security strategy, and we look forward to supporting the OpenSSF in its commitment to collaboration,” said Jonathan Meadows, Citi’s Managing Director for Cloud Security Engineering.

Comcast

“Open source software is a valuable resource in our ongoing work to create and continuously evolve great products and experiences for our customers, and we know how important it is to build security at every stage of development. We’re honored to be part of this effort and look forward to collaborating,” said Nithya Ruff, head of Comcast Open Source Program Office.

DevSamurai

“We are living in an interesting era, in which new IT technologies are changing all aspects of our lives everyday. Benefits come with risks, that can’t be truer with open source software. Being a part of OpenSSF we expect to learn from and contribute to the community, together we strengthen security and eliminate risks throughout the software supply chain,” Said Tam Nguyen, head of DevSecOps at DevSamurai.

Mirantis

“As open source practitioners from our very founding, Mirantis has demonstrated its commitment to the values of transparency and collaboration in the open source community,” said Chase Pettet, lead product security architect, Mirantis. “As members of the OpenSSF, we recognize the need for cross-industry security stakeholders to strengthen each other. Our customers will continue to rely on open source for their safety and assurance, and we will continue to support the development of secure open solutions.”

Snyk

“As the number of digital transformation projects has exploded the world over, the mission of the Open Source Security Foundation has never been more critical than it is today,” said Geva Solomonovich, CTO, Global Alliances, Snyk. “Snyk is thrilled to become an official Foundation member, and we look forward to working with the entire community to together push the industry to make all digital environments safer.”

About the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF)

Hosted by the Linux Foundation, the OpenSSF (launched in August 2020) is a cross-industry organization that brings together the industry’s most important open source security initiatives and the individuals and companies that support them. It combines the Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), founded in response to the 2014 Heartbleed bug, and the Open Source Security Coalition, founded by the GitHub Security Lab to build a community to support the open source security for decades to come. The OpenSSF is committed to collaboration and working both upstream and with existing communities to advance open source security for all.

About the Linux Foundation

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Linux Foundation Announces Free sigstore Signing Service to Confirm Origin and Authenticity of Software

Wed, 03/10/2021 - 01:00

Red Hat, Google and Purdue University lead efforts to ensure software maintainers, distributors and consumers have full confidence in their code, artifacts and tooling

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 9, 2021 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the sigstore project. sigstore improves the security of the software supply chain by enabling the easy adoption of cryptographic software signing backed by transparency log technologies.

sigstore will empower software developers to securely sign software artifacts such as release files, container images and binaries. Signing materials are then stored in a tamper-proof public log. The service will be free to use for all developers and software providers, with the sigstore code and operation tooling developed by the sigstore community. Founding members include Red Hat, Google and Purdue University.

“sigstore enables all open source communities to sign their software and combines provenance, integrity and discoverability to create a transparent and auditable software supply chain,” said Luke Hinds, Security Engineering Lead, Red Hat office of the CTO. “By hosting this collaboration at the Linux Foundation, we can accelerate our work in sigstore and support the ongoing adoption and impact of open source software and development.”

Understanding and confirming the origin and authenticity of software relies on an often disparate set of approaches and data formats. The solutions that do exist, often rely on digests that are stored on insecure systems that are susceptible to tampering and can lead to various attacks such as swapping out of digests or users falling prey to targeted attacks.

“Securing a software deployment ought to start with making sure we’re running the software we think we are. Sigstore represents a great opportunity to bring more confidence and transparency to the open source software supply chain,” said Josh Aas, executive director, ISRG | Let’s Encrypt.

Very few open source projects cryptographically sign software release artifacts. This is largely due to the challenges software maintainers face on key management, key compromise / revocation and the distribution of public keys and artifact digests. In turn, users are left to seek out which keys to trust and learn steps needed to validate signing. Further problems exist in how digests and public keys are distributed, often stored on websites susceptible to hacks or a README file situated on a public git repository. sigstore seeks to solve these issues by utilization of short lived ephemeral keys with a trust root leveraged from an open and auditable public transparency logs.

“I am very excited about the prospects of a system like sigstore. The software ecosystem is in dire need of something like it to report the state of the supply chain. I envision that, with sigstore answering all the questions about software sources and ownership, we can start asking the questions regarding software destinations, consumers, compliance (legal and otherwise), to identify criminal networks and secure critical software infrastructure. This will set a new tone in the software supply chain security conversation,” said Santiago Torres-Arias, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Purdue / in-toto project founder.

“sigstore is poised to advance the state of the art in open source development,” said Mike Dolan, senior vice president and general manager of Projects at the Linux Foundation. “We are happy to host and contribute to work that enables software maintainers and consumers alike to more easily manage their open source software and security.”

“sigstore aims to make all releases of open source software verifiable, and easy for users to actually verify them. I’m hoping we can make this easy as exiting vim,” Dan Lorenc, Google Open Source Security Team. “Watching this take shape in the open has been fun. It’s great to see sigstore in a stable home.”

For more information and to contribute, please visit: https://sigstore.dev

About the Linux Foundation

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