Open Source Business Alliance Explained

Open Source Business Alliance - Bundesverband für digitale Souveränität e.V.
Founded Date:2011
Location:Berlin (Germany)
Focus:Establish open source as the standard in public procurement and in research and business development. Support of digital sovereignty for citizens, companies and administration

The Open Source Business Alliance - Bundesverband für digitale Souveränität e.V. is a German non-profit that operates Europe's biggest network of companies and organizations developing, building and using open source software.[1]

History

The alliance was founded in July 2011 in Stuttgart. The two founding associations, Linux Solutions Group e.V. (Lisog) and the LIVE Linux-Verband e.V., officially merged their groups at their annual general meetings on the 20th and 21 July 2011.[2] [3]

The merger aimed to create a unified lobby group for the German open-source movement.[4]

In 2014, a further attempted consolidation failed. The OSB Alliance and the Open Source Business Foundation (OSBF) first announced their intention to merge the two associations to form a single large advocacy group on 18 November 2013. After almost a year of negotiations that only achieved an agreement, the merger collapsed on 15 October 2014.[5]

At their annual general meeting in Berlin in 2018, the association's name change to "Open Source Business Alliance - Federal Association for Digital Sovereignty" was proposed and received broad support from the members present. From the perspective of the association, open source software and open standards are necessary and essential prerequisites for digital sovereignty. The OSB Alliance has established itself as one of the mouthpieces and has been promoting and promoting the topic of "digital sovereignty" for several years. As a nationwide representative of the open source industry and users, the OSB Alliance has now expanded its name in order to make this objective more aware.[6]

Goals

General goals

The alliance's main aims are to:[7]

Central objectives of the alliance:[8]

Board

The current board of Open Source Business Alliance e.V. consists of 19 members:[9]

Working groups and projects

The OSB Alliance supports working groups that cover a wide range of issues. As of February 2021 the following working groups were in operation:[10]

WG Cloud
  • WG Continuous License Compliance
  • would like to make companies that rely on the "innovation model - open source software" less vulnerable and thus more competitive. The group wants to contribute to efficiently taking into account the aspect of license compliance in medium-sized companies. The “Continuous License Compliance” working group aims to bring routine and continuity to the handling of open source licenses and to promote the automation of open source compliance in cooperation with the community. In addition, the exchange of experiences and best practices should be encouraged and promoted.
    WG Education
  • works on the modern use of digital and interactive teaching and learning material in schools and digital education platforms based on open technologies and standards. In November 2013, the group presented a 30-page document entitled “Digital media, educational platforms and IT infrastructure in schools based on open systems and standards”.[11] [12] The goal is to create an open “education cloud” that is centrally provided but configured locally.
    WG Events
  • decides which events the association attends and arranges its participation. Since 2012, the Working Group Events has organised the OSB Alliance’s Open Source Day,[13] held every autumn. Another of its main focuses is coordinating the appearance of the OSB Alliance at CeBIT,[14] as well as at other events with relevant topics, such as the OPEN-IT SUMMIT [15] [16] [17] or OPEN!2015.
    WG Procurement
  • WG Public Affairs
  • formulates the positions of the OSB Alliance related to politics and public administration.[18] [19] [20] The group maintains direct and regular contact with politicians, acts as a point of contact for all questions from the public sector and cooperates in European fora. In November 2013, the working group published a brochure on PRISM and its consequences, with tips for countermeasures.[21] [22] Most recently on 21 October 2014, the group held an open IT conference with councillors of the Green Party.[23] [24]
    WG Security
  • Companies and personal members who have special expertise in the field of security have come together in the OSB Alliance to form the Security Working Group. In this way, the exchange of experience among the members can be promoted and analyses and statements on security topics can be developed for the interested public.

    Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS)

    In November 2019, Rafael Laguna de la Vera (founding director SPRIND), Peter Ganten (CEO Univention and chairman of the OSB Alliance), Oliver Mauss (CEO PlusServer) and Kurt Garloff came up with the idea of proposing a manufacturer-independent, free, federatable cloud stack for Gaia-X and develop. The idea was given the name Sovereign Cloud Stack [25] (short: SCS) and fell on fertile ground at BMWi and Gaia-X.[26] SCS was integrated as a sub-working group in Gaia-X and further developed by a small team made up of Christian Berendt (CEO OSISM), Dirk Loßack and Kurt Garloff and a growing community. A feasibility study was also carried out on behalf of SPRIND and a funding application for the BMWi was drawn up for the OSB Alliance. On July 13, 2021, the OSB Alliance announced that it receives 14.9M€ funding to coordinate and fund the development of the software and the ecosystem.[27] SCS is affiliated to the Gaia-X Provider Working Group as an (Open) Work Package.[28] SCS uses available open source technologies such as Ceph, Prometheus, OpenStack and Kubernetes and performs the automation, configuration, integration and validation of the components in a standardized and certifiable stack. In addition to the software stack, the project focuses in particular on tools for business automation and the documentation of business processes.[29] With Betacloud [30] and PlusCloud Open [31] [32] the first productive SCS-based public clouds are already available (as of July 2021); further public clouds and implementations as private clouds in industry and public administration [33] are already in progress.

    Lisog open source stack

    Component Provider Description
    Virtual Desktop Environment Red Hat, Topalis, Univention
    Web Portal Red Hat, tarent, OpenSAGA
    Projectile, Information Desire Software Customer relation management, project, program and portfolio management
    Enterprise Resource Planning
    IT Service management
    Groupware
    Project management
    Product Lifecycle Management
    JasperSoft Business Intelligence
    Document management
    SOPERA BPM BPMN, BPEL, BPEL4PEOPLE, Process server and monitor
    Datenbanken
    JBoss, Sopera ASF JEE Application Server, eclipseSOA WebService AppServer
    Enterprise Service Bus
    Application Integration Sopera DI Drag & Drop ETL Data integration components
    Topalis, Wilken, Zarafa E-Mail, Groupware
    e-mail archive Benno SMTP-based e-mail archive
    Asterisk, Cowic Voice over IP
    Linux/Hypervisor operating systems
    File sharing filespots File sharing and file converter
    File sharing in the cloud
    Online Storage RisingTide Systems iSCSI, FCoE, FC Storage server, based on LIO Target
    Pacemaker (LinBit/Red Hat/Novell) High availability, data mirroring
    SEP Sesam Backup and recovery
    Archiv Grau Data AG Longterm archive OPENARCHIVE
    Pyramid, Boston Deutschland Hardware for Cloud center and appliances

    Open Source Integration Initiative (OSII)

    LiSoG initiated a project intended to integrate the single components through a SOA strategy. The project is hosted by MFG in Stuttgart and founded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology within the Central Innovation Programme SME.[34]

    External links

    Notes and References

    1. http://www.osb-alliance.de/en/home/ About the OSB Alliance
    2. http://www.computerwoche.de/a/open-source-business-alliance-startet,2499789/ Computerwoche: The raise of the OSB Alliance
    3. http://www.linux-magazin.de/NEWS/Lisog-und-Live-verschmelzen-zu-Open-Source-Business-Alliance?category=0/ Linux-Magazin: LiSOG and Live merged
    4. http://www.pro-linux.de/news/1/17298/lisog-und-linux-verband-schliessen-sich-zusammen.html/ Pro-Linux: LiSoG and Live merged
    5. http://www.heise.de/open/meldung/Open-Source-Business-Zusammenschluss-von-OSBF-und-OSB-Alliance-geplatzt-2425042.html/ heise.de: No merge between OSB Alliance and OSBF
    6. https://www.pro-linux.de/news/1/27584/osb-alliance-benennt-sich-um.html/ pro-linux.de: OSB alliance is renaming itself
    7. http://www.osb-alliance.de/en/ueber-uns/ OSB Alliance: About us
    8. http://www.osb-alliance.de/en/ueber-uns/leitlinien-der-osb-alliance/ OSB Alliance: The guidelines of the OSB Alliance
    9. http://www.osb-alliance.de/ueber-uns/vorstand/ Board OSB Alliance
    10. Web site: Working groups OSB Alliance . 2015-07-14 . 2015-07-12 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150712104815/http://www.osb-alliance.de/working-groups/ . dead .
    11. Web site: Working Group Education Whitepaper "Digital Media, Educational Platforms and IT infrastructure in schools based on open systems and standards" . 2015-07-14 . 2015-07-21 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150721042457/http://www.osb-alliance.de/fileadmin/Downloads/OSBA_WG_Education_Whitepaper.pdf . dead .
    12. http://www.pro-linux.de/news/1/20498/osba-fordert-offene-standards-und-freie-software-im-bildungswesen.html/ Pro-Linux: About the whitepaper of the Working Group Education/OSB Alliance
    13. http://www.linux-magazin.de/NEWS/OSBA-Open-Source-Day-in-Muenchen-am-20.-November/ Linux Magazin: Open Source Day 2012
    14. http://www.linux-magazin.de/Special/Cebit-2014/Cebit-2014-OSB-Alliance-veranstaltet-Open-Source-Fuehrungen/ Linux Magazin: OSB Alliance@CeBIT 2014
    15. http://www.linux-magazin.de/NEWS/19.-Linuxtag-und-1.-Open-IT-Summit-in-Berlin/ Linux Magazin: OPEN-IT SUMMIT
    16. Web site: Official Webpage OPEN-IT SUMMIT . 2015-07-14 . 2014-12-18 . https://web.archive.org/web/20141218021120/http://open-it-summit.de/ . dead .
    17. http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/Linux-Tag-2013-Mehr-Business-durch-Open-IT-Summit-1865797.html/ Heise about the OPEN-IT SUMMIT
    18. http://www.linux-magazin.de/NEWS/Rueckkehr-zu-Microsoft-Office-Offener-Brief-an-Stadt-Freiburg/ Report Linux-Magazin about the letter to the city of Freiburg (1)
    19. http://www.linux-magazin.de/NEWS/OSBA-BIKT-FSFE-und-Document-Foundation-kritisieren-Freiburger-Office-Gutachten/ Report Linux-Magazin about the letter to the city of Freiburg (2)
    20. http://www.linux-magazin.de/NEWS/Groko-Koalitionsvertrag-OSBA-sieht-Fortschritte-bei-Open-Source/ Report Linux-MAgazin: Statement to the coalition agreement
    21. Web site: OSB Alliance about PRISM . 2015-07-14 . 2015-07-21 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150721064420/http://www.osb-alliance.de/fileadmin/Downloads/Positionspapiere/20131112_OSBA_Leitfaden_zur_Datensicherheit.pdf . dead .
    22. http://www.pro-linux.de/news/1/20461/open-source-business-alliance-konsequenzen-aus-dem-ueberwachungsskandal.html/ Report Linux-Magazin: About Prism
    23. http://www.silicon.de/41604841/osb-alliance-fordert-open-source-policy-fuer-oeffentliche-verwaltung// www.silicon.de: Open Source Policy for the public sector
    24. http://www.linux-magazin.de/NEWS/Offener-IT-Gipfel-am-21.-Oktober-in-Hamburg-mit-Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger-und-Kuenast/ Report Linux Magazin: Open IT Summit in Hamburg
    25. Web site: Sovereign Cloud Stack . Scs.community . 2022-09-13.
    26. Web site: The Gaia-X Hub Germany.
    27. Web site: Press release: OSB Alliance develops Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) for the Gaia-X project . 2021-07-13 . 2021-08-11.
    28. https://community.gaia-x.eu/apps/files/?dir=/OWPs%20-%20Community/WP%20SCS&fileid=4749672
    29. Wolken-Verbund: Mit Sovereign Cloud Stack zu mehr digitaler Souveränität. Ix. 18 November 2020. 2020. 12. 48. Garloff. Kurt.
    30. Web site: Cloud resources on steroids . Betacloud.de . 2022-09-13.
    31. Web site: Pluscloud open: Die deutsche Open Source Cloud | plusserver.
    32. Die Europa-Cloud kommt: Pluscloud open – erster Sovereign Cloud Stack für GAIA-X. Ix. 17 March 2021. 2021. 4. 58. Loschwitz. Martin Gerhard.
    33. Web site: Gute und effiziente Verwaltungsmodernisierung braucht digitale Souveränität und keine neuen Abhängigkeiten. July 2021.
    34. http://www.bmwi.de/English/Navigation/Service/publications,did=345284.html SME/ZIM Programme of German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology

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