Today, four European non-profit open source organizations announced they have joined forces in the OSPO Alliance, and I’m very pleased to tell you the Eclipse Foundation is one of those organizations. By collaborating with the other OSPO Alliance participants, we will help public and private organizations in Europe and around the world discover the benefits of open source, maximize its value to their organization, and grow to create an Open Source Program Office (OSPO).
Creating an OSPO helps organizations coordinate and manage all of their various open source activities as they build and strengthen their open source strategies. The OSPO functions as a central liaison between the open source communities the organization participates in and internal teams. Their efforts eliminate duplication of effort among internal teams, raise awareness of new open source opportunities, and ensure open source best practices are followed across the organization.
Leverage the Expertise of a Group Effort
Our fellow OSPO Alliance founding participants are OW2, OpenForum Europe, and the Foundation for Public Code. The announcement of the OSPO Alliance is supported by a number of partners including Bosch, the City of Paris, Software Heritage, Fraunhofer FOKUS. We’re all committed to increasing the maturity level of open source through our contributions.
The Eclipse Foundation will help on different topics, from demystifying open source to promoting best practices in the area of structured and professional management of open source based on the open source processes, governance, and community collaboration models we’ve developed over the last two decades
Discover the OSPO.Zone Resource Hub
The OPSO Alliance’s first initiative is the OSPO.Zone website. This open resource hub gives organizations easy access to materials that are key to discovering and benefiting from open source. The initial materials available on OSPO.Zone will be based on the OW2 Good Governance Initiative, which is built on a five-stage open source maturity model:
- Usage: Basic skills in using open source software
- Trust: Secure and appropriate use of open source software
- Culture: Belonging to the open source community at large
- Engagement: Engaging with the open source software ecosystem
- Strategy: Open source as a corporate strategy
One of the core principles of the OSPO Alliance is openness, so you would not be surprised to learn that even the website and the content that will be hosted at ospo.zone, will be managed openly and transparently through Eclipse Plato project.
I want to thank everyone who was involved in creating the OSPO.Zone. We are just getting started, and looking forward to onboarding new members who want to contribute to this initiative, or to show support as they’ll use the content.
Visit OSPO.Zone and join the tribe!