Open Source Program Office

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.

Details

Numerous companies have OSPOs, such as Yahoo!, Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg L.P., Comcast or Porsche, and universities like Trinity College Dublin, the University of Vermont, or Johns Hopkins University. The US Government's Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has also established an OSPO to help them improve organizational effectiveness.

The tasks of an OSPO include both business oriented goals:

Advocacy for free software within the organization
Internal and external community management and support of the respective maintainer of the software projects
Development of Business models for open-source software
Corporate communication to the open source strategy inside and outside the organization and contact with other OSPOs

And technical and legal compliance issues such as:

Technical support of projects
Maintenance of public and private repositories on GitHub and GitLab for version control.
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