Finance:Open Source Program Office

From HandWiki

An Open Source Program Office (OSPO) is a department formed by subject-matter experts involved in free and open software. This team may also oversee the operation of open standards and digital public goods. It often includes an understanding of legal compliance issues and risk management, but is not limited to this. OSPOs can also play a role in culture change within an organization.

Implementations

Companies that have OSPOs include Yahoo!,[1] Goldman Sachs,[2] Bloomberg L.P., Comcast, and Porsche.[3] Universities with OSPOs include Trinity College Dublin,[4] the University of Vermont,[5] and Johns Hopkins University.[6] The U.S. federal government agency Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has also established an OSPO to help them improve organizational effectiveness.[7][8]

The Linux Foundation has projects that support people developing or maintaining OSPOs, TODO Group and Community Health Analytics in Open Source Software (CHAOSS).[9] There is also an OSPO community for those working in university and research institution OSPOs, called CURIOSS.[10]

Responsibilities

The tasks of an OSPO include business oriented goals:

OSPOs also handle technical and legal compliance issues, such as:

  • Technical support of projects
  • Maintenance of public and private repositories on GitHub and GitLab for version control.[13][14]
  • 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[12][11][3]

References

  1. ↑ "The Open Source Program Office". https://yahoo.github.io/oss-guide/docs/resources/the-ospo.html. 
  2. ↑ "Goldman Sachs' Open Source Program Office, One Year In". August 18, 2022. https://developer.gs.com/blog/posts/goldmansachs-ospo-one-year-in. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "The Evolution of the Open Source Program Office (OSPO)". February 2022. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/research/the-evolution-of-the-open-source-program-office-ospo. 
  4. ↑ "Open Source Program Office - Trinity Innovation". https://www.tcd.ie/innovation/OSPO/. 
  5. ↑ "About" (in en-US). https://verso.w3.uvm.edu/about/. 
  6. ↑ "Open Source Programs Office (OSPO)". https://drcc.library.jhu.edu/open-source-programs-office/. 
  7. ↑ "Open Source Program Office". https://www.cms.gov/digital-service/open-source-program-office. 
  8. ↑ "How one federal agency worked to release open source software responsibly" (in en). https://www.usdigitalresponse.org/resources/cms-open-source-software. 
  9. ↑ Manrique Lopez de la Fuente, J. (May 8, 2020). "A guide to setting up your Open Source Program Office (OSPO) for success" (in en). https://opensource.com/article/20/5/open-source-program-office. 
  10. ↑ Ruediger, Dylan; Baytas, Claire; MacDougall, Ruby; McCracken, Chelsea (August 14, 2025) (in en). University Open Source Program Offices. doi:10.18665/sr.323392. https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/university-open-source-program-offices/. Retrieved 2025-10-29. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 "Why have an open source program office?". February 4, 2021. https://www.redhat.com/en/resources/open-source-program-office-brief. 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 TODO (OSPO) Group - Open Source Program Office (OSPO) Definition and Guide, GitHub, 2025-09-30, https://github.com/todogroup/ospodefinition.org, retrieved 2025-10-29 
  13. ↑ The Linux Foundation (2024-04-26). Repository Cohorts: How OSPOs... - James Siri, Natalia Luzuriaga, Remy DeCausemaker & Isaac Milarsky. Retrieved 2025-01-22 – via YouTube.
  14. ↑ The Linux Foundation (2024-04-26). Establishing a Baseline: Repo Metrics, Ma... - Natalia Luzuriaga, Remy DeCausemaker & Isaac Milarsky. Retrieved 2025-01-22 – via YouTube.



Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Finance:Open_Source_Program_Office&oldid=4004012"