An Open Source Program Office (OSPO) is a physical or virtual department formed by Subject-matter experts involved in Free- and Open Software and Open standards management and operations in the organization.

Details

OSPOs are supported by numerous companies such as Yahoo!, ^[1] Goldman Sachs, ^[2] Bloomberg L.P., Comcast or Porsche, ^[3] universities like Trinity College Dublin ^[4] or the Johns Hopkins University. ^[5]

The tasks of an OSPO include:

• Advocacy for free software within the organization. ^{[6] [3]}
  • Internal and external community management and support of the respective maintainer of the software projects.
  • Maintenance of public version controls.
• Release for use of free software.
  • Documentation of dependencies in used or included free software to prevent vulnerability or software license violations from third-party software.
  • Creation and monitoring of license compliance policies of free-software licenses in deployed applications or published products. ^{[7] [6] [3]}
• Corporate communication the open source strategy inside and outside the organization ^[7] and contact with other OSPOs.
• Development of Business models for open-source software. ^[7]

References

Web Links

• ospo-alliance.org Association of OSPOs, including the Eclipse Foundation
• todogroup.org OSPO community of practice formed by member organizations and individual contributors
• CURIOSS OSPO community for those working in University and Research Institution OSPOs
• opensource.com - A guide to setting up your Open Source Program Office (OSPO) for success
• joinup.ec.europa.eu - The Rise of the Open Source Program Offices (OSPO)