A Deep Dive into Day-to-Day Operations
- Introduction
- Assessing Daily Operations -
✅ Assessment - Recommendations -
💡 Recommendations - Resources -
📚 Continue Here
Introduction
Understanding the day-to-day activities of those managing open source operations within an organization is crucial for several reasons. First and foremost, it sheds light on the fundamental tasks that an OSPO must focus on to ensure the organization’s technology strategy and aefforts aligns with open source best practices. This knowledge helps to streamline engineering processes and maintain compliance with open source licenses and security measures.
OSPO day-to-day operations encompass a broad spectrum of activities aimed at enhancing open source engagement and compliance within the organization, including providing personalized technical support on licensing and software selection, leveraging automation tools for process efficiency and security, developing and disseminating educational materials, strategically allocating resources, managing risks through comprehensive assessments of the tech stack, sponsoring and engaging with open source communities and foundations, measuring technical debt in projects, and facilitating coordination across various organizational divisions to align both technical and non-technical objectives.
Personalized Technical Support: Involves answering questions on all aspects of open source, including license compliance, selecting open source software, and interactions with vendors. It also includes engaging with the community and partners, securing sponsorships, and organizing open source events.
Automation tools: Efficiency in process automation is key because policies alone may not always be effective as they are not always followed. Managers are usually seeking effective options for automation tooling, including for security automation and reporting, such as the integration of scorecards.
Documentation, Training, and Education: Crucial to ensure that individuals are qualified to assess projects. Developing training materials and documentation and aiding teams to produce these across different departments are key tasks.
Resource Allocation: Requires a strategic approach to prioritize effectively.
Risk Management: Involves assessing the risks the organization faces. Obtaining a comprehensive view of the organization’s tech stack, such as generating SBOMs, and considering software from vendors, legacy software, and proprietary software is crucial. This is more about a business assessment perspective rather than just data gathering. Decisions need to be made on whether to optimize SBOMs or to allocate time to other areas.
Sponsoring Open Source Communities and Foundations: Providing insights into the dynamics and complexities of open source governance and models is part of this.
Measuring Technical Debt: In open source projects requires understanding maturity and governance models.
Coordinate with Various Parts of the Organization: Map interactions with teams based on the OSPO flower diagram, distinguishing between technical questions (engineering) and non-technical questions (business, design team).
Assessing Daily Operations
This section presents a detailed overview of the operational considerations necessary for managing open source initiatives within organizations. This section is structured to cover several key areas: the core reasons for Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) to prioritize specific tasks, the tangible benefits these tasks provide to the organization, the scope of engagement with open source in terms of usage and contribution, and an inventory of tools and services that support these efforts.
| Category | Fundamental Reasons for OSPOs to Focus on This Task | Perceived Value | Using Open Source (Scope) | Contributing to Open Source (Scope) | Tools / Services |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Automation in License Compliance | Streamline license management to facilitate easier discovery of licenses and minimize the approval processes required from developers when using open source tools. | Automation in license compliance reduces manual oversight, accelerates development workflows, and ensures compliance with open source licenses without burdening developers with lengthy approval processes. | Explore automation tools that assist developers in organizations in scanning and identifying open source licenses they can use, and speed up the compliance process. | Explore automation tools that assist developers in organizations in scanning and identifying open source licenses to projects they would like to contribute as employees, and speed up the compliance process. | License checker for NPM ecosystem: https://github.com/onebeyond/license-checker |
| Automation in Security | Enable tools and best practices for integrating security measures, such as scorecards, into daily operations. | Automation in security practices and vulnerabilities exploration in open source projects allows effective risk management. | Explore automation tools that assist developers to self-assess security risk on specific projects, without burdening them with lengthy approval processes. | Explore automation tools that assist developers to self-assess security risk on projects they would like to contribute as employees, without burdening them with lengthy approval processes. | OSFF Scorecard https://github.com/marketplace/actions/openssf-scorecard-monitor |
| Measuring Performance | Inform strategic adjustments and operational enhancements. | Measuring performance facilitates transparent assessment of the OSPO’s effectiveness. | TBD (ping CHAOSS OSPO metrics WG to give input on this). | N/A | N/A |
| Strategy and its Impact | A unified strategy influences daily operations. | Guiding decisions on contributions to open source projects, engagement with community initiatives, and the balancing of organization and community benefits. | Enable decision makers understand the critical importance of supporting open source projects (and its community) and foundations, and the different ways to offer support. | Frameworks that support strategic planning and execution. | N/A |
| Personalized Support / Q&A Sessions | Actively involve employees and managers in open source activity engagement. | Increase and improve open source knowledge and expertise across the organization’s teams. | Answering questions on everything about open source, including license compliance, selecting open source software, and dealing with vendors. | Answering questions on everything about open source, including license compliance, selecting open source software, and dealing with vendors. | Internal developer portals / Issue tracker systems / Chatbots / webinars / AMA sessions / IRC |
| Advocacy and Education | Advocating for the importance of education in open source and creating resources to support it. | Ensure that people are qualified to judge a project (governance models, maturity, etc) and measure the technical debt on an open source project. | Build training and documentation, and assist teams in creating these materials across different teams. | Providing knowledge on how to measure the technical debt on an open source project, including maturity models and governance models, is a form of educational advocacy to help projects improve and sustain. | External open source training and certification courses, customized training courses adapted to the organization’s goals. |
| Community Integration | Integrate organization’s activities effectively with the open source projects and foundations (financial as well as resource support) as well as community dynamics. Map interactions with technical (engineering) versus non-technical teams (business, design team). | Allocate effective financial and resource support to critical open source projects that organization’s employees use/engages. | How to get sponsorship, run open source events, and integrate effectively with the open source community and its foundations. | How to get sponsorship, run open source events, and integrate effectively with the open source community and its foundations. | N/A |
| Business Assessment on Risk Management | Assess risks that the organization is facing, including an overview of the tech stack. | Assistance in evaluating which open source projects to use and how to prioritize resources effectively. | E.g., business assessment to determine whether optimizing SBOMs or focusing on other areas is more beneficial (dealing with vendor-supplied software, legacy software, proprietary software). | E.g., business assessment to determine whether optimizing SBOMs or focusing on other areas is more beneficial (dealing with vendor-supplied software, legacy software, proprietary software). | N/A |
Recommendations
💡Recommendations
Scenario #11
Social Engineering Attack on Upstream xz/liblzma: A social engineering attack targeted the xz/liblzma, an essential open source library. The attack was meticulously planned, gaining trust within the community before executing a malicious attack. This incident was discovered inadvertently by an unrelated project, underscoring the sophistication and stealthiness of such vulnerabilities. The challenge for Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) lies in identifying and mitigating these vulnerabilities, which are not always apparent until after they occur. Despite existing procedures and policies, OSPOs recognize the need for mechanisms to proactively measure and respond to such threats.
Recommendation
SBOMs Compliance Ready: Ensure that all software components are documented through Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs). This documentation helps in quickly identifying potentially compromised components once a vulnerability is disclosed.
Automation Security Checks: Implement automated security checks, such as the OpenSSF Security Scorecard, to continuously evaluate the security posture of projects. This proactive measure can highlight vulnerabilities or anomalies that merit further investigation.
Having a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) within the organization and having the OSPO collaborate closely with them. This specialized team should be equipped with the tools and authority to respond swiftly to security incidents. Pre-existing relationships within the team facilitate rapid internal communication about the > > severity of incidents.
Scorecard Management: Keep security and vulnerability scorecards up to date. These scorecards should reflect the latest security checks and assessments, helping in quick decision-making during a crisis.
Automated Feedback Loops: Develop well-automated feedback loops for bug reporting and fixing. Knowing who is responsible for addressing a particular bug and ensuring that this process is as automated as possible can significantly reduce response times.
Scenario #12
OSPOs face the challenge of navigating license changes and assessing software trustworthiness. As projects like Redis have shown, altering license terms can have significant implications for use, distribution, and contribution. These changes needs clear communication and understanding of the roles and responsibilities dictated by new license terms. Furthermore, OSPOs are tasked with evaluating the trustworthiness of software, which can vary based on whether a project is maintained by a single vendor or hosted under a foundation. For instance, The Almalinux Foundation presents a case where donating a project to a foundation mitigated risks associated with single-vendor governance, thereby enhancing trust in the project.
Recommendation
Educational Initiatives on License Implications: Develop educational materials and sessions for developers and users within the organization to understand the nuances of different licenses. This understanding will help them make informed decisions when using or contributing to open-source projects.
Explicit License Terms: Work with legal teams to ensure that license terms are as explicit and unambiguous as possible. Clear terms help in avoiding misunderstandings and potential legal conflicts.
Software Trust Rating System: Implement a system to evaluate and rate the trustworthiness of software, considering factors like governance structure, maintenance practices, and community engagement. Projects hosted under reputable foundations could be rated higher for trustworthiness due to the oversight and governance provided.
Encourage Foundation Hosted Projects: Advocate for donating projects to foundations to mitigate risks associated with single-vendor control. Highlight successful cases like Almalinux to illustrate the benefits of this approach, such as increased trust and community support.
Stakeholder Engagement in License Decisions: Engage a broad range of stakeholders, including developers, legal advisors, and end-users, in discussions about license changes or the adoption of new projects. Their insights can help in making balanced decisions that align with the organization’s values and risk tolerance
Resources (TBD)
- Materials that we have shared during the calls or related to this chapter
- Materials that we have shared during the calls or related to this chapter
- Materials that we have shared during the calls or related to this chapter